


Hellbender

by Hydra_In_Brooklyn



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Brock Rumlow/Original Character, Drama, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Hydra (Marvel), Multi, SHIELD, SHIELD Husbands, Secret Relationship, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 43
Words: 167,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hydra_In_Brooklyn/pseuds/Hydra_In_Brooklyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vivienne, a recent SHIELD Special Operations Academy graduate, finds herself sorted into a spot in STRIKE team Delta led by Agent Brock Rumlow. It seems that the team is determined to make it hard for her to find camaraderie in them, but Vivienne works hard to eventually call them teammates.<br/>What follows changes Vivienne and slowly cuts away at her humanity. Unexpected barriers emerge, jarring her from what she had once considered her reality into a life that she barely recognizes. Twisted by empty faith and shallow relationships, she scarcely recognizes and begins to fear the broken woman in the mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hellbender Chapter 1

Alexander Pierce looked up when he heard the door to his office open. Director Fury closed the door behind him and paused at the other end of the room, looking around slowly at the cityscape that graced the face of every floor-to-ceiling window in the room. “Every time,” he said, finally turning to Pierce and catching his wrist behind his back. “Every time I come up here I end up going back jealous of this view. Incredible.” He walked forward slowly, a smile on his lips. It seemed genuine, but Pierce knew him better. Hardly was Nickolas Fury genuine unless he wished to genuinely display how irritated he was in particular situations.  
“Nick, how good to see you.” Pierce responded. “And yes, the view is quite remarkable.”  
Fury eventually arrived at Pierce’s desk.  
Pierce looked up expectantly. “What can I do for you, old friend?”  
Fury laid a stack of folders on Pierce’s desk. “I sent you an email about the situation with the STRIKE team a while back, didn’t I? I recall that I did—it was a few weeks ago. You said I should tell you the ideas I have and so I’m here now telling you my ideas.” He paused, raising his eyebrows. “Of course I had emailed you back about that first, but you never responded, so I figured I’d come up here. I hope it’s not too much trouble.”  
Pierce was somewhat taken aback. “Oh. Well, no. No, it’s not too much trouble. I regret having unintentionally made you come up here to talk, but hey, what’s an elevator ride up a few floors, right?”  
Fury smiled tightly and pushed the files back into the topic of their chat, edging them forward on the desk. “I want you to review these. They’re some files I pulled from the academy. Special training applicants. Due to the unfortunate loss of the last applicant the STRIKE team accepted, I’ve decided that we need to get back to searching for a replacement.”  
“Oh.” Pierce rubbed his chin. “I remember now. I feel like I told you that it wasn’t exactly necessary to replace the applicant. The STRIKE team can run fine with five people—trust me. Agent Rumlow has it covered. He’s one of the best in the field.”  
Fury stepped back, leaving the files. “Well I don’t doubt that, but I would feel better knowing that our STRIKE team is running at full strength and potential. I personally know these applicants I’ve selected. They’re dedicated and they are the top of their class.” He paused, waiting for Pierce to respond, but he didn’t, so Nick went on. “Either way, I think this position needs to be filled in a timely manner so that the addition of a new member will be somewhat seamless.”  
Pierce raised his eyebrows and scratched the back of his head with an air of finality. “I’ll look into it. Anything else, Nick?”  
“Just that.” Nick nodded toward the files. “I’ve separated my top choices from the rest, but the final decision is yours.”  
“Alright. You get home safe tonight.”  
Nick nodded, his eyes locked to Pierce’s. “You too…you too.” He turned and walked out of the office just as the sun was starting to sink below the silhouette of the distant skyscrapers.  
Vivienne scanned her access card and walked into the metal detector.  
“lift your arms, please.”  
Vivienne lifted her arms, feeling the material of her suit bunch snugly over her shoulders. She heard the excited rhythm of her heartbeat in her ears.  
After working in one of the branches of SHIELD outside of the city, she had finally been transferred into DC and today was her first day on the job. She had spent an extra two years at the academy training for her special operations qualification and she had graduated a little over a month ago with flying colors. It had seemed like a waste of her time and abilities for them to have her stationed outside of the city for so long, especially doing work that was exceedingly below her skill set, but someone had finally transferred her to the Triskelon and she was thrilled to finally feel like she was a part of something meaningful.  
Vivienne turned and saw the security guard looking at her expectantly. “Sorry, what?” She asked, catching onto the fact that he had indeed said something.  
“You’re clear.”  
“Oh, ok.” Vivienne smiled at him and she was instantly forgiven for her daydreaming. 

The Triskelon was bustling with agents, some carrying files and wearing business suits, others in all grey or black with holsters on their hips or over their shoulders—those were the field agents. Vivienne felt her heart lift in anticipation when she saw them and wondered fleetingly where she would be stationed. She realized then that she didn’t even know where Nick Fury’s office was. There was a man standing nearest to her by the elevator and since he didn’t seem to be too preoccupied with anything but his phone, she decided to ask him for help.  
Vivienne walked up to him. “Uh, hey…”  
The man turned, fumbling a little with his phone in surprise. “Hi.”  
Vivienne smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of Director Fury’s office. I’m supposed to be there at eight.”  
“Uh, yeah.” The man hesitated and checked his phone before answering her. “You know you got like a minute, right?”  
Vivienne smiled tightly. “Well, I didn’t think traffic would be so shitty.”  
The man snorted. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’ll give you that. Traffic blows. Hey, look—I’m going to the same floor as you so why don’t I just get you there. Maybe I can help you brainstorm an excuse for being late.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Alright.”  
The man pushed the button for the elevator. “Pretty sure this stupid thing is half-broken. I already pushed it once.”  
There was a silence before the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside.  
“I assume you’re new.”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks redden. “Maybe.”  
The man extended hand. “I’m Clint. You’ll probably see me around. I’m guessing you’re going to be a field agent.”  
“Yeah,” Vivienne said, taking his hand and shaking it. “How did you know?”  
Clint snorted. “Well, first of all, you’re kinda wearing a field agent uniform.”  
“Tch, yeah, I suppose.” Vivienne laughed in embarrassment.  
“So I didn’t catch your name…?”  
“Vivienne.” Vivienne beamed and pushed back a lock of short blonde hair. “I’m Vivienne. It’s nice to meet you, Clint.”

 

Clint did as he said he would and escorted Vivienne to the Director’s office, however, the Director wasn’t there, so he wished Vivienne luck and left her to sit inside the office alone. Vivienne didn’t mind it. It gave her a moment to collect herself. She looked around the room, but it was sparsely decorated and didn’t do well to hold her attention. All that seemed to hint that the office was occupied was a single picture frame sitting propped on the desk, but it was turned away from her and she couldn’t see what it was of. Vivienne twiddled her thumbs.  
“Agent Donahue…”  
Vivienne startled and started to get up from her chair, looking over her shoulder to see Director Fury shut the door, seemingly engrossed in a file he held in his hand.  
“Yes, sir.”  
Fury nodded with a smile, flipping through the papers in the file. “You can sit.”  
Vivienne could make out her name printed in all caps on the front cover of the folder and she felt her heart race to think that he was looking over her information at that moment.  
Fury took a seat behind his desk, set the folder down in front of him, and folded his hands over it, leaning forward with interest.  
“Now, Donahue. When was the last time we talked in person?”  
Vivienne squinted a little, trying to recall the exact date. “Two years ago, at the beginning of May I’m pretty sure…sir.”  
“Seems like just yesterday, doesn’t it? I remember meeting a select few of the applicants continuing on to get their special operations qualifications and you were among them. From what I have in this file, you had set specific goals for yourself and worked hard to eventually achieve them, or else you might not be sitting in front of my desk today.”  
Vivienne nodded. “Yes, sir.”  
“Now,” Fury’s eye that wasn’t covered with his eyepatch was locked to hers. “You graduated amongst the top of your class. Very impressive. I understand the academy these days isn’t all lollipops and roses.”  
Vivienne risked a sideways smile. “It had its ups and downs.”  
Fury accepted that as an invitation to continue. He turned to his computer and started the smartscreen, which immediately lit up with an organized display of Vivienne’s entire collection of Academy records.  
Fury swiped them to the side and the screen was refreshed with a display of a blank SHIELD document. Fury looked across at Vivienne, who was studying the numerous information boxes. “Don’t worry,” he said, seeing the flicker of disappointment cross Vivienne’s face. “The program submits all of the information from the academy into our files automatically, so all we have to do here today is figure out which operation we are going to start training you for.”  
Vivienne was relieved.  
Fury started the download and pulled out a tablet from a drawer in his desk. He swiped the face several times, pausing and studying the screen thoughtfully before continuing on each time. “You know,” he said slowly. “I was up last night for a long time thinking about this and it’s a tough call. I was going to start you shadowing Hill’s field team today, but now I’m starting to think that there’s a better place for you. Files only say so much about a person, but from the little I know about you, Hill’s team seems like it may be a little under-stimulating.”  
Fury sighed and sat back into his chair. He lingered for a moment in the haze of deep consideration, still fixated upon the screen of his tablet. Suddenly he seemed to come to a decision and he leaned forward, typing fiercely on the face of his tablet. The office was silent, save Fury’s unintentionally amplified breathing due to his concentration and the tapping of his fingers.  
Vivienne chewed on her lip in an attempt to distract her impatience. She looked out the window, but the coming and going of the occasional pack of black suburbans did little to take her mind off of the delay to the start of her much-anticipated first day in the Triskelion.  
“I know where I want you…” Said Fury, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But I’m not sure what the situation is at this moment.”  
Vivienne leaned forward a little, wondering what he could mean.  
Fury seemed to sense her confusion. He shut off his tablet and set it on the desk. “Well, how about this—Tech Records needs some help right now and we’ve recently been a little short-staffed there. It probably won’t really be your cup of tea, judging by your studies and qualifications, but I don’t want to send you home on our first day.”  
Vivienne felt her good feeling plummet. Fury had turned back to his computer and was now logging into the Tech Records department to admit her into the system there. When he looked over at Vivienne again he saw her dissatisfaction.  
“You can speak freely. I know you’re disappointed.”  
Vivienne ignored his remark. “Sir, how long am I going to be in Tech Records and if you don’t mind me asking—why is my orientation being delayed further?”  
Fury held up his hands. “I can’t really tell you that, Agent. The bigwigs upstairs have a say in everything that goes on down here. Needless to say there are some things I need to get sorted out first before I can place you. But—if it all works out, I can guarantee you that you’ll be much more satisfied with the particular placement I have in mind. And as for Tec Rec, in all honesty, I don’t want you there either—“  
“Then why--?”  
“Because.” Fury’s tone of finality cut through the momentum behind Vivienne’s building frustration. “Every person in this organization contributes to it in their own way whether they are out in the field or behind a desk. I figured, after having looked over your files and thinking I knew a little bit about the kind of person you are, that you would want to help make a contribution today, whether it goes toward your end goal of being a field agent or not.”  
Vivienne was silent. She felt humiliation flush across her cheeks.  
Fury watched her. “So far I like you, Agent Donahue. That drive will get you places fast as will your attitude, especially around here—you need it. But have a little patience; the end result will be much more satisfactory. Like I said, I know where I want you and I think you would be an exceptional addition, but there’s a lot of red tape that needs to be cut through first to get you there and trust me when I say that this is just as frustrating for me as it is for you.”  
Vivienne swallowed. “Yes, I understand sir. I apologize.”  
Director Fury shook his finger at her. “No, never apologize unless you mean it.”  
Vivienne was silent, feeling like whatever she said next might be deemed wrong as well.  
Fury smiled again. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I just prefer the truth—nothing you said wrong. Now find your way to Tech Rec. There should be somebody waiting for you there to help you get acclimated to the way we operate down there.”  
Vivienne smiled, but it had lost the heartfelt quality it had had that morning. “Thank you, Sir.”

 

Vivienne keyed into Tech Records and opened the windowless door into the darkened windowless room. It was a basement department, so she expected no less, but it didn’t help her mood. The glow of numerous computers gave the department an eerie icy-cold feeling and the tapping of many fingers on many keyboards added to the unusual atmosphere. Vivienne immediately felt a drain in energy; no one was talking and it immediately sent her back to memories of her dreaded data processing classes at the academy.  
“Agent Donahue.”  
The clear voice seemed too loud in the quiet sector and Vivienne turned, a little caught off guard by the abruptness of it. She felt a bit of the tensions seep out of her senses when she found the source. “Clint?”  
Clint, the man she had met on the elevator, was getting up from a nearby desk. He squinted in the dimmed room. “Oh hey! Vivienne, right?” He approached her, a clipboard in hand and an earpiece in his ear that blinked blue every five seconds. He glanced at the large black watch on his wrist. “That didn’t take long. Why are you here? I thought you were supposed to start your field orientation today.”  
Vivienne shrugged. She felt eyes on them, very aware that the lack of quiet in Clint’s voice was attracting attention. “I thought so too,” she whispered back.  
Clint seemed to take the hint and he whispered, “Well what happened?”  
“I don’t know. The director said he knew where he wanted to put me but there was something about how he would have to cut through a bunch of red tape to get me there.” Vivienne sighed. “Well, whatever, It’s just my luck. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that I’m stuck here for a while.”  
Clint smiled sympathetically. “Eh. It’s not that bad. If Fury says he’s got something in mind, then he does. I wouldn’t be too worried about it.”  
“Yeah.”  
Clint pulled a sheet of paper off of the clipboard he had and handed it to Vivienne. “These are all of the recurring codes you’ll need to start off with. I went ahead and logged you into this computer beside me so I can help you figure this out.”  
Clint went back to his desk and Vivienne followed him. He rearranged a stack of papers beside his keyboard and Vivienne noticed for the second time since that morning that he was wearing a field agent uniform like hers. It was a little more worn, but it seemed like he had taken care of it for a long time. She wondered fleetingly why he wasn’t in the field.  
Clint turned back to her and nodded in the direction of the space he had cleared for her. “Go ahead and take a seat. I’ll teach you the ropes. Pretty much the most basic thing you need to remember is don’t fall asleep. I did that once. It was bad. Don’t fall asleep.”  
Vivienne smiled, thinking that the day might not be as horrible as she thought it might be.

 

Vivienne’s eyes had started to water thirty minutes into the process and now, well over four hours later, she felt a throbbing headache start somewhere in the back of her skull. Clint had stopped talking for the most part and had surrendered to the workload, popping an earbud into the ear not being used for work purposes. His music was muffled and Vivienne could barely make out what was playing, which was almost as aggravating as the task at hand. Vivienne slumped in her chair and pressed her palms to her eyes.  
Clint popped out his earbud. “You hanging in there?”  
Vivienne gave him a look. “How the hell do these people do this?” She whispered.  
Clint shrugged. “Dunno. You couldn’t pay me enough to do this all day every day.”  
Vivienne raised her eyebrow. “Well why are you here now?”  
Clint shot a sideways smile at her. “Probably better for your first impression of me not to know.”  
Vivienne squinted at him, but Clint didn’t seem like he was about to give himself away. Vivienne decided to put the mystery on the backburner for now.  
Clint interlocked his fingers behind his head and arched his back, letting loose a few satisfying pops from his spine. He yawned and then turned back to Vivienne. “You hungry?”  
Vivienne really wasn’t all that hungry, but she sensed the opportunity to get out of the computer cave. “Yes.”  
Clint logged off of his computer and rolled back his chair. “Let’s go then.”

There was a small café in the main lobby of the Triskelion that Clint led Vivienne to which served crusty scones and lukewarm coffee. He warned her against both and Vivienne ended up opting for an apple. She picked a table and waited for Clint to come back with his food and drink. Though Clint had informed her that there was no good food to be found in the Triskelion, Vivienne noticed that the little café was still very alive with SHIELD agents and the quality of dining didn’t seem to discourage lengthy lines. This gave Vivienne the opportunity to people-watch and she quickly categorized all of the different types of people that came in with the department they belonged to. It seemed as though the departments were a huge network of intertwining acquaintances and it wasn’t hard for people to find each other and start up a friendly conversation about their work day. She watched longingly as a group of field agents came in together, laughing at an inside joke and clapping each other on the shoulders while they recounted a loud story to embarrass one of the other members. Vivienne propped her chin on her palm and spun her apple on the table.  
Clint returned shortly thereafter with a coffee and a cookie. He took a cautious draw from his cup before setting it down, a sour look on his face. “Geeyuck. See? I told you—Nasty.”  
Vivienne took a bite out of her apple. “Well why did you buy it? It’s, like, crazy overpriced here.”  
“Yeah,” agreed Clint. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I’m pretty poor and I buy it, like, every day.”  
Vivienne looked at him.  
“Hey. Like I said. It doesn’t make sense.”  
They watched people file in. The line never seemed to die down.  
“So they don’t know where you’re going?”  
“I don’t know,” said Vivienne. “At first Fury said he wanted me on Hill’s field team…?”  
Clint raised his eyebrows. “Really? Huh. You must be pretty ok.”  
Vivienne smiled. “Tch. Well, I don’t know about that. Apparently I’m better off in Tech Rec right now.”  
A tall, thickly-built man with a heavy brow and dark combed hair opened the door to the café. He skipped the line and walked to the end of the counter where an attendant went over to talk to him.  
Clint nodded to indicate the man. “Well isn’t he something special.”  
Vivienne watched the man as the woman gave him a tray of steaming freshly-brewed coffee. The man walked with the tray past the rest of the line, ignoring the irritated looks people gave him, and out the door again. “How…?”  
“I’m pretty sure he’s part of the STRIKE team. I wanna say Rodney…Rhupert…Rollins?”  
“What a prick.”  
“Agreed.”  
Vivienne finished her apple and Clint wolfed down his cookie, tossing the rest of his coffee in the trash. They walked out of the café and headed back to Technology Records together.


	2. Hellbender Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne feels like she's wasting her time in Tech Rec and Clint's already back out in the field. After a long exhausting day at the computer doing boring work, Vivienne finally receives a message from Fury. After meeting with the Director, however, she wonders if she should trust his judgement enough to risk her job security. Vivienne feels uneasy, Clint loves zombies, Fury is cryptic, and SHIELD seems a little more compartmentalized than Vivienne anticipated.

The next couple weeks went by slowly. Every day when Vivienne came to work, she would immediately check her emails, but would see the usual work requests and notices there and nothing yet from Fury. She would voice her unease about the situation aloud to Clint, who reassured her every time that it was highly unlikely that Fury forgot about her.  
In the mean time, Clint and Vivienne made going to the crappy coffee shop every day a habit. To Vivienne, it was a lifesaver to be able to resurface from the Tech Rec department and she genuinely enjoyed Clint’s company. He was very outspoken and it was refreshing to be around someone again that she had begun to consider a friend. She hadn’t had many friends in the academy; her program of study had been competitive and acquaintances felt much more like resources there than someone one could complain to about their shitty day.  
Towards the beginning of her third week, Vivienne was feeling useless. The day had started out with a downpour and smoggy, impatient traffic and the usually cheery security guards sat behind their desks without a smile to be had, clutching their coffees over the screens of their scanners. Vivienne’s motivation had been left at home between the warm sheets of her bed and she didn’t feel like being cordial.  
The Tech Records department was the same dull place it usually was. It seemed a little colder than usual, but it could have been because of Vivienne’s wet hair and clothes. Clint’s desk was empty, so Vivienne sat down without waiting for him and got to work. She had begun bringing her own music to work, which made it a little more bearable, but not really, and she popped her earbuds in and settled into her chair for several more hours of mind-numbing number crunching.  
Little over an hour later, Clint still wasn’t there. Vivienne began to worry. There had been several wrecks that morning that really hadn’t helped the traffic situation now and she revisited the slippery roads in her head. She looked around her and, seeing that no one was paying any attention to her at all, she retrieved her phone from her pocket. Clint had asked for her number a couple days ago “for emergency purposes”. In reality, she had been texting back and forth with him just the night before while she was watching a zombie TV show contemplating the legitimacy of a zombie apocalypse.  
Vivienne hurriedly typed. “Where are you?”  
She switched her phone to vibrate and put it back in her pocket.  
A few minutes later, her phone buzzed and she swiped open the lock screen.  
“OMG SO SORRY. I’m back in the field today”  
Vivienne sighed and texted back. “You suck.”  
She put her phone down on the desk, a little disappointed that he had sprung the cage without her, but who knew how long he had been working in Tech Rec before she came? She went back to her computer and entered a few more dates before her phone buzzed again. She glanced over at the screen.  
“I get off at 6. Take u for a drink then?"  
Vivienne smiled. The text seemed to lift some of the moody greyness that hung stubbornly around. She sent a text back saying that she would and glanced up at the clock. She just had to live through eight more hours.

 

Vivienne was just finishing up her third-to-last report that she had to file when a message popped up in the messaging center on her desktop. She filed the report and paused, downsizing the program to read what had been messaged to her.  
Report to Director Fury’s office.  
That was it.  
Vivienne’s eyes widened and she felt her pulse quicken. She logged out of her desktop, saving the last two files away, and gathered her things. After she shut the door quietly to the Tech Rec department, she looked around to make sure no one was watching and punched a fist into the air “Yesss!”  
Fury’s office had never seemed so far away. When she got to the door, she smoothed back her hair and took a breath before entering.  
Fury looked up. When he recognized who she was, a smile crept across his lips. “Well..,” he said. “You somehow survived Technology Records.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Barely, Sir.”  
Fury waved a hand. “Alright, alright. Don’t try to guilt trip me. Come over here, Agent, and take a seat.”  
Vivienne did as he told her and scooted her chair closer to the desk. “Did I get my assignment, Sir?”  
Fury sat back in his chair and laced his fingers together. “Well, that is what I asked you here to talk about.” He sighed, rolling his shoulders. Vivienne thought he looked a little uncomfortable. “Computer, secure the office.”  
Vivienne looked around as the windows tinted and she heard the automatic click as the doors locked. She looked back at Fury and waited for an explanation for what he had done.  
“Agent,” he said slowly. “The first rule in this business is to never trust anyone. You can never be too careful with information; every little word that leaves our mouths can be used against us and every little thing we do can be…misinterpreted.”  
Vivienne’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? What did you ask me here to do?”  
Fury raised an eyebrow. “Nothing that would normally be considered unusual. I told you that there were some barriers in the way of me getting you oriented where I want you. Well, some of them I settled, and others I…bypassed. The thing is—if you want this position, you have to fight for it and I guarantee you that I will back you one hundred percent because I feel like you’re the best fit for this job.”  
Vivienne was silent, her brow furrowed while he talked. She analyzing everything he said. “Does someone not want me there?” She asked.  
Fury shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that yet—It’s that they don’t think they need you there. But I’ve been in this business a long time. Long enough to know that they do.”  
Vivienne felt a tingling along her arms and legs; an uneasy feeling crept over her body and under her skin. “I don’t want to do anything that would compromise my job here, sir. I’ve been working toward this for a long time.”  
Fury smiled. “I know how hard you worked, Agent. I would never put your job on the line—If you agree to take this position, the most negative outcome would be a reprimand emailed to me from upstairs. Once you’re on the team, you can’t be withdrawn unless you give us cause to withdraw you.”  
Fury’s reassurances did little to quench Vivienne’s feelings of unrest, but she pushed them to the back of her mind. “What is the assignment?”  
Fury smiled and Vivienne knew that her mere interest, although suspicious, had already committed her.  
“The SHIELD STRIKE team.”

 

“The what?” Clint nearly choked on his beer that he was tipping back.  
Vivienne turned her empty shot glass around and around on the bar counter.  
After work, Clint met Vivienne in the Triskelion lobby and they had headed out to Charlie’s, which was apparently a long time favorite bar of Clint’s. He had promised her that he would introduce her to the city and every hidden gem of a place he knew of amongst the well-trodden, dingy bars and over-toured scenic locations, and Charlie’s was first on the list. The bar was warm and inviting; it had started to drizzle again as they left the Triskelion and Vivienne was grateful for the dry, welcoming atmosphere, not to mention the shot of Hennessey on the house after the exchange of a beguiling smile with the bartender. Now, they sat at the bar chasing the beginning stages of a buzz, a half-empty container of peanuts between them and two empty glasses down.  
“The STRIKE team.”  
Clint wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You remember the guy from the café, right? You know, the big tall asshole that looks like he’s chronically having a bad day? That guy is on the STRIKE team. What do you imaging the rest of those guys are like?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “I dunno, but I need another shot.” She looked over at the bar tender expectantly, but after she refused to give him her number, he wasn’t paying any more attention to her. She rolled her eyes and turned back to Clint, who seemed to be waiting for her to say something. “What.”  
“Did Fury say why he chose that for you?”  
“Not really. He said that he felt like that was the best place for me.”  
“But those other guys are dicks. You’re too nice to be on the STRIKE team.”  
Vivienne smiled. “Yeah, you’ve only known me for a few weeks. First impressions aren’t exactly what a person is really like. I could be a total asshole.”  
Clint snorted. “I don’t think so. Maybe that bartender thinks so, but I don’t think so.”  
Vivienne laughed. “Ha. Shut up.”  
Clint’s smile faded and he rubbed the back of his neck, “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you got a high placement. The STRIKE team is very specialized.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow, hearing the disappointment in Clint’s voice. “So I’ve been told.”  
Clint looked over at the bartender, but the neglect apparently affected him, too and the guy was busy cleaning the same spot he had been cleaning for the past five minutes. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as I’ve been imagining.”  
“Hey now,” Vivienne said. She added a hint of humor to her tone to dispel Clint’s sudden melancholy, “You’re still gonna hang out with me and buy me drinks and stuff, still, right? Like, if you’re not, then maybe I should go back and tell Fury no.”  
“Nah,” said Clint. “I won’t ditch you, yet.” He picked up a peanut from the tray and broke the shell, popping the inside into his mouth. He shook the empty shell at her. “Just don’t go changing and we won’t have a problem.”

There were still documents to be filled out, mostly a bunch of what seemed like the same stuff over and over: liability forms, medical and back up medical plans, releases of personal information, agreement to submit to health exams throughout training, and a lot of stuff about incrimination if any information was spilled that could compromise the team or SHIELD. Vivienne found herself quickly becoming more enthused about the choice Fury had made for her. Though he had told her that she would have to spend months training with the team before actually being taken out on any missions, the anticipation for the day that she would finally be out doing something built with every form she filled out.  
There was a series of tests, too. By SHIELD requirements, she wasn’t allowed to advance in order to start training with the STRIKE team until she passed them, but since it hadn’t been long since the material had been drilled into her memory from the Special Operations part of her academy education, she passed them over the course of a few days without having to study too much. Most of the tests involved recognition, problem solving, and typical combat sequencing along with a few other topics that had been the center of study in the academy. There were other tests that would be conducted later on, but those were meant to be taken during training and since they were psychological and physical exams, she didn’t worry too much about them. Fury had handed her the previous test results with few words, but with a smile on his face instead that made Vivienne proud of her accomplishment.  
She had been physically active since the academy, but now she pushed herself to ensure that she could easily meet the demands that the STRIKE team might make. She went with Clint to the gym at the Triskelion for the first time; It was busy and a little crowded, but there was no need for impatience when her time waiting was time spent listening to Clint recount amusing stories from his own career out in the field. There were drinks at Charlie’s afterward—the bartender was a different one this time and so they spent an extra hour before Clint dropped Vivienne back off at her car.  
Vivienne watched the taillights of Clint’s truck bounce through the security gate and disappear around the corner before she bothered fishing for her keys. It was a warm night and the breeze seemed a little fresher than usual. When Vivienne looked up at the sky with a sudden feeling of contentedness that warmed her chest and sent chills across her arms, the clouds seemed to part just then and the smog hid deep in the city alleys and gutters to allow a clear view of the stars. Vivienne allowed herself a smile of satisfaction, feeling like they were there for her and that eventually they would be within her grasp.  
She found her keys and unlocked her car, drawing in one last breath of the beautifully pure and untouched evening before heading back to her apartment.


	3. Hellbender Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne's first taste of the STRIKE team is bitter, but after having worked toward this for so long, she isn't planning on letting go anytime soon, regardless of the less-than-pleasant welcome from the team leader or the belittling treatment she receives from one of the team members. Vivienne gets frustrated and feisty. Agent Rumlow lays down the law. Rollins is a grumpy teddy bear, and it turns out, for once in his life, that Clint is indeed right.

Vivienne felt the alarm on her phone drill into her head before she realized what it was. When she did, she groaned, pulling her arm out from under her, and smacked her hand around on top of the dresser next to the bed. In her attempt to grab her phone, she accidentally bumped it off the dresser and it fell into a pile of dirty clothes on the floor. She let the alarm drill on a little longer; it took a while for her eyes to open without the strong urge to let them close again.  
Vivienne finally got up after a few groggy seconds and kicked around the lump of clothes by the bed to find her phone. When she retrieved it, she hurried over to the window to shut out the morning cold that had been seeping in since she had left the window open the night before. The room was frigid and she was tired and hungry. She went to the kitchen and bent over the open refrigerator door for a long time before she gave up, not seeing anything she wanted to eat. Instead, she took a hot shower and mostly succeeded in waking herself up.  
She brushed her teeth as she checked the notes she had made herself from what Fury had told her the day before. Apparently she was supposed to be in gym three by five-thirty a.m.. That was on the Eastern side of the Triskelion. She hadn’t ventured in that section yet and she mentally scolded herself for not having found the place she was supposed to be this morning the day before. It would have given her a little more time.  
She looked across her shabby apartment at the window on the far end of the room. The morning was too early for color to start seeping into the sky and instead inky blackness pressed against the glass panes. Her reflection looked back at her in a ghostly double. She felt anxiety claw its way up her spine and burrow into her chest with the sight of herself in her black SHIELD attire. Its presence gave birth to a mix of emotions, but those that she felt the strongest were excitement and a hint of dread. She didn’t want to ruin what she had come all this way to achieve, but she couldn’t wait to give something of herself finally and prove that, indeed, she had something to offer.  
She held back the sudden feeling of sickness that accompanied her muddled feelings and turned away from her reflection, snatching her keys off of the counter.

As early as it was at the Triskelion, there was no wait at the security gate—already a deviation from her norm. She thought about texting Clint on her way to the Eastern side of the building, but then she remembered exactly how early it was and she decided against it, so as not to wake him up. The Triskelion functioned on a skeleton crew at night and early in the morning; Vivienne had seen employees come in on her way out since she had started working there. They didn’t seem like the most enthused people and after her rough awakening that morning, Vivienne didn’t wonder why. Now she saw them meandering in the hallways or hunched over their stations looking pale and tired, locked as they were in their nightly routines. Vivienne offered a few smiles, but the closest thing to a smile she got back looked more like a pained grimace.  
The further she walked down the hall, the less people there were. Less light graced the unused rooms with its greenish fluorescent glow and she eventually found herself in the very back halls.  
She swiped her security cart at a portal that stood between her and the rest of the building and pressed her hand on the scanning panel. There was no guard here and beyond it was quiet and dark. Vivienne wondered fleetingly if she was going in the right direction.  
“Donahue, Vivienne M.” stated the gate security system. “Access granted.”  
Vivienne went further, passing massive floor-to ceiling windows that yawned to expose the empty blackness outside. Vivienne looked at her watch. She had five minutes until five-thirty. “Fuck.”  
She approached a set of double doors on her left. Gym 2. She hurried her pace. Gym two must have been huge because it took her a little while before she came upon the set of double doors she was looking for. Gym 3.  
Vivienne felt her stomach turn. She reached for the door. What if Clint was right? What if the STRIKE team lived up to the rumors that he had told her about them?  
She grabbed the handle with a breath and pulled. It was too late now even if they were true. She had made a decision and this was it.  
The gym was empty and the lights were off, save the eerie glow that spilled across the polished wooden floor from an open office at the very end of the space. Vivienne walked into the darkness cautiously. “…Hello?”  
There was a silence, then a voice answered from the office. “In here.”  
Vivienne approached the office slowly, immediately analyzing the tone of the voice in her head. It didn’t sound like the person had been expecting company. She paused in the doorway of the office, but didn’t invite herself inside. She could talk from there.  
An agent, maybe in his late thirties or early forties looked back up at her from over the top of a computer. He had a sharp brow that curved into a very Italian nose that seemed to have been broken a few times. His lips were slightly parted, but they lacked a smile of greeting and Vivienne at once felt like she was being dissected by the emotionless depths of the man’s hazel eyes.  
Regardless of the lack of greeting, Vivienne found her voice. “Uh hey..Sir. I was told this would be where I could find the STRIKE team.”  
The man watched her, but Vivienne held his gaze no matter how uncomfortable or inferior it made her feel.  
“And who are you?”  
Vivienne’s heart felt like it would beat out of her chest. “I’m the new recruit.”  
The man’s eyes narrowed. After what felt like a lengthy silence, he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. Vivienne watched him size her up quite obviously. “Hm,” he said finally. “See the thing is… I don’t remember requesting a new recruit or even needing one for that matter.”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks redden. “Well…I’m supposed to talk to Brady…”  
The man’s eyebrows went up. “Oh really.” There was humor in his tone, but it was cold and Vivienne sensed that it would dissolve quickly.“Brady. Huh. Brady’s dead.”  
Vivienne felt her patience running thin. She wasn’t used to the trying treatment she was being given and she hadn’t been victim to it since basic training.  
“Well,” she said, taking a step further into the office to make it more apparent that she wasn’t going anywhere. “Either way…whether Brady is dead or not, I’ve been assigned. I’ve completed all the necessary paperwork. I’ve passed the first stage of exams and I was told to be here.”  
“Apparently.” The man didn’t seem perturbed by her persistence. “Stow the tone or I will escort your ass back outta this room. And as for talking, I do the talking. If I talk to you, I call you what I want, but on the rare occasion that you talk to me, you call me ‘Sir’.”  
Vivienne’s brow furrowed, but she held back a lot of things she wanted to say. “Yes, Sir.”  
The man sighed and rubbed his chin. “Well I’m not exactly sure who gave you permission to come fuck up my morning. The last thing I need right now is a new agent to train, if that’s indeed what you are.”  
Vivienne took a breath “Director Fury said—“  
“HEY. Zip it. I didn’t say you could open your mouth, did I?”  
Vivienne felt something inside her boil. She gazed back at him as coolly as she could manage, but she was sure he noticed her jaw tighten. He stood slowly from his chair, his palms on his desk as he leaned over it toward her. “No. I didn’t. Now, I’ll look into this and in the mean time, since I’m feeling charitable this morning, I’ll let you have a little meet and greet with the team. Probably not the best time for them right now since they just got back a few hours ago from Russia; they’re tired and grumpy and they probably won’t give a fuck about you, but if you’re training to be on this team, then you need to start somewhere with them.” He straightened and smoothed a hand over his dark hair. He looked cross at her and saw her disenchanted expression. “Look, kid.” He said with a humorless chuckle. “This ain’t the academy. I’m not here to help you with your baby steps and I’m not here to be your friend. You a little sad bout some of the things I’ve said? Tough. I don’t know what you’ve heard about STRIKE, but we don’t waste our time with bullshit.”  
Vivienne held her breath. She was mad. Mad that somewhere along the way the memo had apparently been lost that she was coming. Mad that it was five forty-something in the morning and she had already been degraded to the basic-cadet level all over again. Mad that Clint had been right and mad that she had said yes in the first place. She held it all inside and it begged to surface, but she didn’t let it. At least the academy had been good for one thing and that was resuming a stony composure when presented with emotional difficulty and this man was certainly being difficult.  
The man pulled a pager out of the pocket of his black tactical pants. He looked at it for a minute, then looked back up at her. “Talk.”  
Vivienne swallowed. “I have nothing to say.”  
“I don’t believe that. Talk, Agent.” He went back to looking at his pager.  
Vivienne sighed and unclenched her teeth. “Excuse me if I’m blunt, Sir, but I’m not here to waste your time with bullshit. I don’t know where the break in communication was but I can guarantee you that I’m supposed to be here. I wasn’t trying to fuck up your morning, but now, after you’ve made assumptions about me and tried to degrade me, I’m not afraid to say that I don’t feel bad about doing it.”  
She watched as he looked back up at her slowly. She met his gaze and was surprised not to see anger or irritation there. He seemed to regard her a little differently. “Well I’m glad you’re not apologizing. That would be a sure ticket outta here.”  
Vivienne didn’t know if she was allowed to feel relieved yet.  
“What’s your name?”  
“Agent Vivienne Donahue, Sir.”  
“Agent Donahue…” He stowed away his pager and opened a drawer in his desk. He pulled out a tablet that resembled Fury’s and slammed the drawer shut again. “I’m Agent Brock Rumlow. You never call me Brock. You never call me Agent Rumlow unless you are referring to me when talking to others. You always call me ‘Sir’. Now. Since Brady has inconvenienced us all with his death, I’m gonna go ahead and assume that what you’re saying is truthful and, like I said before, you can train a little with the team today. If your files come through to back you up, it falls to me to train you as your new S.O. But let me tell you something, Donahue. I have a team to run…the STRIKE team. They’re mine. If you make yourself a problem or you don’t catch on fast enough, you don’t have what it takes to be on this team and you’re out before you have the chance to ask why.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
Agent Rumlow’s gaze was piercing. Vivienne knew that if she had had any doubt that she might not be able to meet his expectations, he would have surely found it then and there. He held her gaze a little longer until he was satisfied with not having found any traces of anything that might indicate premature failure, then he walked around the desk toward the door.  
“The team is in Gym 2. Let’s go.”  
Vivienne turned to follow him, letting a held breath go. She felt a little dizzy from the confrontation. She certainly hadn’t expected it, but she felt a little more empowered after he had lightened up a little following her candid confession.  
They walked back across the dark gym, Vivienne feeling her unease beginning to ebb away a little.

 

Agent Rumlow didn’t talk on his way back down the hall with Vivienne. She felt the desire to break the silence, but then she remembered what he had said about talking and she remained silent instead. Rumlow seemed to be fiddling with his tablet anyways and not at all interested in if she was following him or not. When they reached the door of the gym, he finally turned back to her.  
“These boys might try to hurt your feelings, but it’ll be ten times worse for you if you actually let them.” He raised an eyebrow with a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Of course, if you wanna tap out, you aren’t on the team quite yet so you just let me know.”  
Vivienne looked at him and realized he was serious. She snorted. “I’m not tapping out, Sir. I appreciate your advice.”  
Rumlow yanked open the door. “Well, I’m not killing the offer until I get your paperwork, so you got a bit to decide. You think they give the new guys a hard time? Ha. I still have yet to see how they’d treat a lady.”  
The gym was bright. As soon as Vivienne stepped in the door, she felt a whoosh of displaced air brush her arm and she turned in time to see two figures tangled in the midst of a wrestling match on the floor. The one on top, the massive man whom she recognized from the café had apparently just dropped and pinned his opponent underneath him, who was struggling to regain some sort of ground.  
Agent Rumlow put two fingers in his mouth and released a shrill whistle.  
The two men on the floor released each other immediately and clambered to their feet. There were two men in the background as well, one doing pull-ups and the other on a treadmill. Both snapped to attention when they heard the whistle. Vivienne immediately felt eyes on her. She looked around and met the gazes of each of the men in turn, attempting to establish some sort of impressive presence, but she had a hard time conjuring a thoroughly confident appearance when they were all so huge and imposing. The only one that stood closest to her height was the one that had been pinned so easily to the floor and he looked at her with a smirk.  
“What’s this?” He asked.  
“Did I ask you to talk, Henley?”  
The man, Henley, seemed a little taken aback that someone would interrupt him. “No, but I wanna—“  
“Shut up.”  
Vivienne felt a little satisfaction in the irritation she detected in Rumlow’s tone. It wasn’t just her he used it for. Maybe it was chronic.  
Henley shook his head. Vivienne saw his jaw muscles tighten when he looked back at her. She held his gaze.  
“STRIKE, this is Agent Donahue. Apparently she’s a new recruit. She’ll be training with you today so treat her nice, please. SHIELD doesn’t pay me enough to babysit so don’t act like five-year-olds.” Rumlow looked pointedly at Henley, but Henley was too busy glaring at Vivienne to notice. Rumlow caught the look and nodded at Vivienne. “Offer’s still on the table,” he said to her.  
Vivienne smiled back at Henley. “Well I’m not picking it up, so you may want to clean it off.” She felt Rumlow’s eyes on her a little longer, but she wasn’t going to give any of them the satisfaction of intimidating her.  
Rumlow addressed the team again. “Alright, boys. I got better things to do than stand around and introduce all of you. Make friends and play nice. I’ll be in my office.”  
Rumlow turned and left without another word. The click of the gym door closing seemed a lot louder in the silence that followed. Vivienne looked around at the men again, trying to decide who would be the easiest to talk to first.  
“You know…” She said, her voice seeming loudly out of place in her head. “You guys don’t look as scary as I heard you were.”  
“Psh!”  
Vivienne looked back at Henley. He spat on the ground in front of her.  
“Rookie.” He muttered.  
Vivienne pushed her fingers through her hair nonchalantly. “I now what I am, thanks.” She said with a smile. “You’ve already made it apparent what you are.”  
She ignored the searing look she received from Henley and walked up instead to the man who had been pinning him mercilessly to the ground, figuring he might be better company.  
“Hey,” she said, using the same smile that earned her the free shot at Charlie’s. “You wanna show me the ropes?”  
She heard a chuckle from back behind him, but she didn’t break her focus on him. A humorous voice, laced with the deep melody of a Southern accent muttered just audibly enough for both to hear. “Yeah, Rollins. Show her the ropes. She wants you to teach her.”  
A smile crept across Rollins’ flat line of a mouth. “Sure.”  
He turned and Vivienne followed him over to the bench press station. He squatted next to the weight rack and ran his fingers over the massive irons on the bottom. Vivienne swallowed, very aware that the weights there surpassed anything she had benched in the past. She didn’t want to tell him, though.  
He pulled up a weight from the bottom rack, his back and shoulder muscles extending and contracting under his bare tanned skin, making the transference of the weight a seemingly easy task. He looked back up at Vivienne and passed it in her direction. “Here. You hold this.”  
Vivienne reached out and he gave the weight fully to her. She staggered a bit in surprise at how heavy it was compared to how light he had made it seem. She exhaled through her nose, not wanting her struggle to be audible to everyone.  
She heard a snicker somewhere, but she tuned it out. She didn’t doubt it was Henley.  
The rest of the morning followed suit as Vivienne expected it to. She spotted for Rollins while he benchpressed. though, if she were actually needed, she doubted if she could actually help him lift that amount of weight off of his chest. Though she now and then asked him a question, he would either answer in one breath or not answer at all. It was apparent he didn’t want to be the guy who was nice to the new person and Vivienne didn’t blame them. The other guys seemed like a tough crowd. After Rollins was done benching, Vivienne was about to ask him if he would spot for her, but he walked away to a water fountain and eventually started jogging laps around the gym.  
Vivienne looked around for something to do. One of the men, a tall, sturdy agent with dirty blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, had just come off the treadmill and was going for his bottle of water that stood on the weight rack. Sweat gleamed over his arms and ran in little beads over his forehead. He breathed hard, but not ragged breaths.  
Vivienne looked around, and, seeing that finally the other men had stopped gawking at her, she went over to him.  
“So..hey.”  
He tipped his water bottle back and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. A smile tightened the corners of his mouth while he drank. He finally lowered his water and rubbed his mouth over the shoulder of his cutoff shirt.  
“Hey.”  
Vivienne immediately recognized the Southern drawl. She decided to put him on the spot. “It’s your turn to, ’y’know, show me the ropes.”  
“Is that right? Rollins all done with you?”  
Vivienne nodded over her shoulder to where Rollins was jogging behind her. “Apparently.”  
“Hm.” The tall man set his water bottle down again. “Well, look. See the thing is that I don’t wanna waste my time.”  
Vivienne narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”  
The man waved a hand at her to quiet her. “Hey, hey, now. You can’t blame me.” He nodded across the gym to where Henley was pummeling a punching bag. “It’s just that Katsu over there doesn’t like you and I don’t want to waste my time with you if he’s gonna send you to the ER.”  
Vivienne put her hands on her hips. “Well I can handle whatever that prick can dish and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything organized going on right now anyways, so why not just help me out here?”  
The man sighed and gave her a long look. Vivienne looked back at him with a hard gaze.  
“Fine. What do you want?”  
“I dunno. Something to do.”  
The man chuckled. “Yeah, you never say ‘something to do’ or you’re gonna get stuck doing the shitty job. Especially with Rumlow; always tell him you’ve got something to do or you’re gonna get stuck dragging dead bodies or some other shit.”  
He sighed again and fished around in the pocket of his gym shorts, bringing out a battered box of toothpicks. He took one out, stashing the rest, and popped it between his teeth. Vivienne waited for him to go on.  
“My second week of smoking ces-sa-tion,” he said, putting a lot of southern emphasis on the last word. Vivienne assumed it was a piece of vocabulary he had picked up from the doctor’s mouth. She also assumed that the information held some weight with him, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have bothered sharing it with a rookie like herself.  
“Cut the crap, Cooper. We all know how this goes.”  
Vivienne looked over to see a mountain of a man doing curls beside them.  
He looked at Vivienne. “Ol’ Tex gives up his tobacco sticks for a couple weeks and thinks he’s big shit. As soon as the next mission rolls around he’s back to smoking like there’s no tomorrow.”  
The toothpick man, Cooper, pulled his toothpick out of his mouth. “Shut up, Crue. If I die, at least I’ll die happy.”  
“I’m not judging,” said the mountain man, Crue. “I’m just giving the rookie the run-down on you.”  
“Rookie doesn’t know nothing about me.”  
“Now she does.”  
“Shove a cock in your mouth, Crue.” Cooper popped the toothpick back in his mouth with an air of finality. Crue shut up and continued to curl his massive barbell. Vivienne didn’t know if she should say anything and if she decided to, she didn’t even know where to start. She was grateful when the door to the gym opened just then and Rumlow walked in dressed in PT attire. He stopped and talked to Rollins, who had jogged over to meet him. Rumlow looked over at Vivienne and she quickly looked away and pretended she hadn’t noticed them talking about her.  
“Donahue!”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks redden and knew she hadn’t looked away fast enough. She glanced at Cooper.  
He smirked. “You better not ask him for something to do.”  
Rumlow stood and waited while Vivienne walked over to him. Rollins nodded to him before returning to the rest of STRIKE.  
“Your documents came through,” said Rumlow when Vivienne came close enough. “Looks like you were right.”  
Vivienne felt the tension seep out of her muscles. She didn’t doubt the forms would be there, but she certainly didn’t want to be around if they didn’t. “Well that’s good.” She said lamely, and immediately she wondered where all of her smart remarks had gone.  
Rumlow crossed his arms. “You make friends yet?”  
Vivienne squinted. “I’m not sure, but I know names.”  
“Lotta good names will do you when you’re depending on somebody to cover your ass.”  
Vivienne blinked at him and his unfriendly tone. She didn’t understand why he would still have any reason to be irritated with her since she had been cleared for the team. She was officially a part of STRIKE now, and yet it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. She smiled tightly, the lack of sincerity on her lips was bitter. “I try not to depend on people.”  
Rumlow read her expression, but it didn’t seem like he cared. “Mhm. Take a lap.”  
“What did I—?”  
“I didn’t come down here in search of a headache brought on by your clichéd cocky remarks. Now shut up and run.”  
Vivienne sighed and bit her tongue before she could allow a rebuke to tumble from her lips. She turned away from him and started jogging, seeing Rollins leading the rest of the STRIKE team toward the locker rooms on the other side of the gym. Vivienne guessed Rumlow had given them the rest of the day off.  
When she came back to Rumlow, she caught her breath easily. Running had never been too hard for her, though it was never her favorite method of exercise.  
“Get down and hold a plank.”  
Vivienne did as she was told.  
“First thing I want you to learn about STRIKE is that we are not soldiers,” Rumlow said. He paced the floor in front of her. Vivienne concentrated on his very scuffed combat boots he walked by. “Soldiers are sheep. I don’t train sheep. I don’t want sheep. Sheep can go to the fucking slaughterhouse.”  
Rumlow’s boots made a very faint gripping sound on the polished floor.  
“I train wolves. My men aren’t soldiers—they’re weapons. We don’t tire. We don’t hunger. We don’t question. Our objective is immediate unrestricted execution.”  
Vivienne wondered fleetingly how a person couldn’t hunger. She suddenly regretted skipping breakfast that morning.  
“If I ask you what you are, I expect you to tell me right the first time.”  
Vivienne heard the men remerge from the locker room and she was tempted to turn her head, but she didn’t, not wanting to draw even more attention to herself on the floor in a plank position. The men left the gym with a click of the gym doors and Vivienne breathed slowly through her nose. Rumlow had walked behind her and out of her line of vision. Vivienne knew he was there, but he didn’t make a sound to reinforce the fact. The silence in the gym rang in Vivienne’s ears and she could feel her abdomen start to tighten with the effort to maintain her plank. Suddenly she felt a pressure between her shoulder blades and she realized that it was his boot pressing into her back.  
“What are you?” Came Rumlow’s voice. It was calm.  
Vivienne breathed out. “I’m…a weapon.”  
The boot pressed a little harder before releasing. “No you’re not.”  
Vivienne heard the sound of his boots moving away from her. She felt a quiver in her stomach muscles as she realized he was walking toward the gym doors. She looked up in time to see him open the door and walk out. Vivienne’s face slackened. Where was he going? Why did he just leaver her? She debated whether or not she should hold her plank and ultimately decided that she would. He wouldn’t be gone that long.  
Vivienne’s abdomen shook. She re-adjusted and re-adjusted her elbows, but nothing was comfortable. The floor was hard and cold.  
She glanced up at the door now and then, praying that Rumlow would come back. She wanted to break the plank, but she feared that if she did, she would be caught on the floor when he made his reappearance. Vivienne gritted her teeth and shifted the weight in her elbows again.  
The door opened a little later and Vivienne quieted her breathing. Rumlow’s boots came back and he stood in front of her.  
He took his time with the question Vivienne knew would come.  
“What are you?”  
“I’m a weapon,” Vivienne hissed between her teeth.  
“Are you tired?”  
Vivienne breathed out, aware that her breath was shaky. “No.”  
“Good.”  
Rumlow’s boots went to the door. Vivienne felt like her stomach was on fire. She could feel the convulsions in her muscles. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the click of the gym door closing. It came and Vivienne felt like she wanted to cry. “Jesus Christ…” she choked.  
The next period didn’t last anywhere near the first and Vivienne welcomed the sound of the metallic release when the gym door opened again.  
“Drop your plank, Donahue.”  
Vivienne’s arms collapsed and she rolled onto her back, feeling like a heavy weight had been dropped onto her stomach. She heard a metal scraping sound and registered it as a chair being dragged across the floor. It stopped a little ways away.  
“Get up.”  
Vivienne rolled to her knees and pushed up to her feet from there.  
Rumlow was sitting in the chair he had drawn up. He held a clipboard in his hands. He looked at his black tactical watch on his wrist and jotted down something on the paper. “Tomorrow,” he said, looking back up at her. “You are gonna have a better plank.”  
Vivienne resisted the urge to groan aloud. “I’m pretty sure I beat my record today.”  
“That’s nice. But that doesn’t cut it for my team. Take three laps.”  
Vivienne’s abs felt like lead—heavy, useless. She hesitated at his command, but rethought it when she saw him press a button on his watch. She ran hard to make up for her plank that had apparently not been good enough.  
She felt Rumlow’s eyes on her the whole time. It felt like he was studying her, analyzing the speed she ran, the breaths she took, and the confidence she strived to maintain in her gaze. It was hard to be confident when she was scrutinized in such a way. 

“I’ve never trained a chick for the team,” said Rumlow when Vivienne finished her last lap.  
Vivienne sighed away the little fatigue that had begun to squeeze her lungs and brushed away the crop of blonde hair that had fallen into her face.  
“I expect you to perform similar to the men. I’m not gonna let a girl bring us down, so don’t disappoint me.”  
Vivienne looked squarely at Rumlow, who didn’t seem to care that he was coming across slightly sexist. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, en edge of sarcasm cutting into her reply.  
Rumlow pointed with his pen across the gym. “Climb the rope.”

The day carried on in a similar fashion to the morning. Vivienne caught her second wind before noon, but it began to evade her after Rumlow left her to “jog it out” while he disappeared again to attend lunch, Vivienne assumed. Her muscles had begun to ache. It was like the academy all over again, but harder because it was a personal focus and not geared toward a mass of people. She assumed that Rumlow had her physical records, which included all of her personal bests, but at the end of the day Vivienne predicted that many of those “personal bests” would be surpassed.  
When Vivienne looked up at the huge timer on the far gym wall, it read thirty-five minutes since Rumlow had started it and left. She eyed the door as she made her laps, waiting for him to come back and set her onto her next task. It was well past that when the door finally opened and Rumlow came back, a cup of coffee in one hand and a wax paper-wrapped sandwich in the other. Vivienne’s stomach growled in anticipation of when she would be allowed to leave for lunch. When she came back around, Rumlow stood in her path.  
“Stop.”  
Vivienne stopped, breathing through her nose to quiet her breaths.  
Rumlow took a sip of his coffee. He indicated his chair where he had set his sandwich down with a nod. “You hungry?”  
“Yes.” Vivienne was aware of a sudden tension in the air. She looked back at Rumlow, who had apparently been about to take another sip of coffee, but the cup was frozen halfway to his mouth and he looked at her as if she had said something to insult him. “I..” began Vivienne, racing back through what she had done or not done in her mind.  
“What are you?” Asked Rumlow. Vivienne thought she detected disgust.  
“I…” Then she remembered. “I’m a weapon.”  
Rumlow shook his head in disappointment. Vivienne braced herself.  
“See,” began Rumlow. “The thing is—YOU DON’T TIRE! YOU DON’T HUNGER! And here you are panting like a dog and telling me you’re hungry.” He was only inches from her face now and she looked back into his eyes, wary of what might happen if she looked away.  
“Are you here to waste my time agent?” Rumlow spat.  
“No, sir.”  
“Then why the hell are you wasting it now?”  
Vivienne searched the hazel depths of the man’s irises. She bit her lip, refusing to feel any fear, knowing that he would rip it open inside of her and let it gush through her system if she had allowed it sanctuary.  
“I am a weapon, sir.” She said finally, breaking the electric silence. “I’m not tired. I don’t hunger. I’m here to accomplish one thing and I will not let anything stop me.” She breathed out evenly. “I’m not afraid of you.”  
Something in Rumlow’s jaw flexed and Vivienne wondered what was going through his mind. His dark brows knitted together and then released a little. At one point, Vivienne was sure that he wanted to yell again, but the look vanished as soon as it had come.  
“Go get something to eat Donahue.” He said finally. “You have fifteen minutes.”


	4. Hellbender Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne has let training for the STRIKE team begin to consume her. A little time off is well-deserved, even if it's just one night. Vivienne meets Clint at Charlie's and the resulting morning tempts Vivienne to speak up for herself on the STRIKE team. Rumlow is irritated. Vivienne's throbbing head provokes her wrath. Clint buys too many double shots...

The first week was hellish. Everything Vivienne had been taught at the academy didn’t seem to make much of an impact on her effectiveness training for the STRIKE team because Rumlow had a different way in mind for her to execute things. He had deemed Rollins experienced enough to take charge of leading the rest of STRIKE in training, and so Vivienne hadn’t seen any of the team members since her first day. Rumlow spent the entire time away from the team training Vivienne, which mostly consisted of him watching her over his midday cup of coffee and yelling at her to let her know that she was doing something wrong. The intense memorization of techniques that were slowly taught to her towards the end of the week coupled with extreme physical activity was draining and Vivienne had a hard time sleeping at night and consequentially getting up early in the morning. She hadn’t seen Clint at all that week. He was busy with his own field work and every time he asked her if she wanted to hang out, she was either staying late at the gym with Rumlow trying to perfect something or she was too tired to get out and go somewhere. Rumlow was still relentless and rather than adjusting to what Vivienne believed was his superiority complex, she only became more frustrated and weary with his demands. It was trying getting up early to walk into a barrage of criticism and Vivienne was very aware of the slow demise her social life was going through in consequence to the many hours spent trying to perfect herself.   
Finally, on Saturday, Rumlow had a meeting to attend and he informed Vivienne that they would pick up again with her training first thing Sunday morning, but that the rest of the Saturday was hers. Vivienne didn’t know what to do; her bed seemed to call to her from halfway across the city, but she still hadn’t answered Clint’s text from Wednesday.   
She finished changing out of her damp gym clothes in the empty locker room and threw on what she had worn to work. It didn’t seem to matter what she wore in the mornings when nobody was in the Triskelion and so the past couple days she had thrown on leggings and loose-fitting t-shirts and ditched the suits for now.   
She felt her t-shirt cling to her sweaty skin and she pinched it away, fanning herself with the material. She zipped up her duffle bag and swung it over her shoulder, picking up her phone from the locker-room bench.   
Clint picked up after the first ring.  
“Oh my God, you made it back to the land of the living.”  
Vivienne swung open the locker room door and walked across the gym. Rumlow had already disappeared.  
“Yeah, I’m alive and thirsty.”   
“Get a drink with me.”  
“That’s what I was gonna do regardless of whether or not you were around to get drinks with. The bartender would have probably been pretty friendly to a lonely chick.”  
Clint chuckled across the line. “I’m glad you called. I was beginning to worry.”  
Vivienne bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Eh. I’m not dead yet. I’ve been buried alive is all. I’ll meet you at Charlie’s and tell you about it.”  
“Seven?”  
“Seven.”  
“Should I bring a shovel to dig you out? You might have a better time talking without all that dirt between us.”  
Vivienne laughed. “You do that. I’ll see you later.”  
“Later it is.”  
Vivienne lowered her phone and checked a couple other messages she had missed during the course of the day. She kept walking, smiling, thinking about spending time socializing with Clint, who always had a great story, and about the first satisfying dinner she was about to have, which definitely beat the leftover tacos and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she had been snacking on the last few nights.  
“Woah.”  
Vivienne looked up suddenly and swerved to the side to avoid a collision with Rumlow, who had appeared out of nowhere and seemingly hadn’t been paying attention either, but had noticed her at the last minute.  
Vivienne was about to utter an instinctual apology, but it didn’t make it to her lips. They stared at eachother, having a hard time finding words outside of the training setting. Rumlow lowered his tablet expectantly, as if waiting for her to explain her careless texting behavior.   
“I’m on my way out,” Vivienne blurted. She immediately knew it sounded stupid and her brain went into overtime thinking of all of the witty things she could have said instead.  
Rumlow looked at her duffle and street clothes. “I see that.” He raised an eyebrow at Snoop Dogg’s face that was plastered across Vivienne’s chest. He was blowing a smoke ring.   
“Yeah. I don’t smoke.” Vivienne said, seeing his look. She internally face-palmed.   
“Good for you. I don’t either.”  
Vivienne’s head finally reset and she squinted at him. “I thought you had a meeting, sir.”  
“I do,” said Rumlow. “It’s been delayed.”  
Vivienne wondered if she was supposed to stay now that he had more time. Rumlow seemed to read her mind.  
“I’m not making you stay. It’s been a productive week.” Rumlow raised his tablet again and began to walk by her. Vivienne watched him.  
“Hey,” she said. “Since we aren’t in the middle of proving our badassness right now can you tell me how I’m doing? Like, it would just really help to hear that I’m doing something right.”  
Rumlow looked back at her. “You’re still here, so it looks like you’re doing something right.”  
“Not exactly what I meant.”  
“Not exactly my job to inflate your ego.”  
Vivienne eyed him as he went to the gym door. She had the urge just then to stop him, but she didn’t act on it. Some strange emaciated part of her being enjoyed his dry remarks and it basked in her achievement in goading him to say something snarky. He had gotten pretty creative these past couple days thinking up new ways to tell her that she was doing something wrong and that tiny part of her was flattered that he would take the time to think up a unique criticism each time.   
Vivienne struggled to beat back that part of her now. “Well. Have a good Saturday night.”  
Rumlow paused at the gym door. “Be here at zero five hundred hours tomorrow morning. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for you to puke your guts out, so I’d suggest not getting drunk.” Rumlow snorted to himself and yanked open the door. “Impromptu IQ test—let’s see if she passes.”  
Vivienne threw a theatrically aggressive middle finger to the door that had closed behind Rumlow before heading out to her car.

Clint had gotten there early and was in the middle of flirting with the female bartender that was behind the counter that night when Vivienne walked into Charlie’s. The woman was leaning over the counter, clearly interested in what Clint had to offer. Vivienne sat down next to him and watched the exchange with interest before the bartender slipped Clint her number on her napkin with a wink.   
Clint turned to see Vivienne sitting beside him and color rushed to his cheeks when he saw her look.   
“You got a date, Barton?” She asked, smiling.   
Clint shrugged. “I dunno about that. She’s apparently got a boyfriend, but he’s not a good boyfriend, so I dunno.”  
Vivienne settled into her chair. “Hmm…Clint Barton to the rescue.”  
Clint rubbed his eyes, something Vivienne had noticed he did when he was embarrassed, and patted the counter with his palms when he had gotten over himself. “Speaking of rescue…” He said. He looked over at one of the other bartenders and tapped the counter. The man brought over a double shot of Hennessey. Clint slid it over to Vivienne. “Your shovel,” he said, presenting it to her.  
Vivienne took the glass and Clint had his own double shot poured for him.   
He raised it in mock toast. “To the end of a really frickin’ long work week and to how hammered we’re gonna get you to forget your stressful week at STRIKE.”  
Vivienne grinned, bringing her shot up to meet Clint’s with a clink. They poured back their first drink at the same time and Vivienne felt revitalization slide into her veins as the rich alcohol burned deep inside of her chest. She recounted her week to Clint, who listened intently, seeming on the edge of interrupting her occasionally.   
Vivienne shrugged at the end. “Honestly it’s starting to piss me off,” she said. “How can I ever become ‘part of the team’ when it seems like they already have something against me? They don’t even know me.”  
Clint was having the bartender pour them another double shot. “I dunno, Vi. They sound pretty brutal and all that “I’m a weapon” stuff? Totally brainwashing you.” He slid the next shot over to her. “Maybe it’s the fact that they hadn’t had any successful new recruits in years.”  
Vivienne leaned forward, suddenly interested in what Clint said. “What?”  
Clint nodded towards her shot, trying to bring it to her attention, and tipped back his own glass. He grimaced as the alcohol went down and patted his chest. “Whew.” He said, squinting. “Yeah didn’t I tell you that already?”  
Vivienne knew she would have remembered that. “No..?”  
Clint’s pats turned to rubs as he thought back. “Well I guess I didn’t. Anyways, the STRIKE team has been just those guys for a long time. Fury wanted another person on the team and so he gave them a new recruit. There was some sort of accident on the field or something. The guy ended up dead in the first week of field training. I guess they just lost another guy, too, or so I’ve heard through the grapevine.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne thoughtfully. “Brady.”  
“Weird, though.”   
“Yeah, weird.” Vivienne threw back her shot, deciding to push the matter off of the table for now. Thinking about the STRIKE team seemed to raise her blood pressure and she didn’t want stress to consume one of her only breaks from work. The night was still young and there was so much else she wanted to say and do.

 

Vivienne doubled over the trashcan after her tenth lap. She had felt like she was going to puke doing planks before that, but she had somehow kept it in. Now everything was emptying itself from her stomach and all of the alcohol she had consumed the night before was making its reappearance, this time mixed with bile. She gagged on its bitter taste.   
“Did I tell you that you could stop, Donahue?”  
Vivienne cleared her throat, steadying herself over the trashcan with a white-knuckled grip. Her head throbbed with the complaint of a hangover.   
“Donahue.”   
Vivienne rolled her eyes and pushed herself away from the trashcan. “What.” She saw the look on Rumlow’s face and knew what was coming before it came.   
“Excuse me?” Rumlow’s insulted tone added fuel to the fire in his pace as he went across the gym to her.  
Vivienne didn’t know if she could take it that morning. His orders ricocheted around in her head and didn’t help at all with the throbbing. “What. Sir.”  
“Get down, agent!” Rumlow yelled. “Push-ups. Now.”  
Vivienne got down, but the sudden drop turned her stomach and she felt it heave. She swallowed hard, keeping the bile down. “Guess I didn’t pass the ‘impromptu IQ test’ did I?” she groaned.  
“Shut up, Donahue!”   
Rumlow stood over her now, and Vivienne sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t puke on his boots.   
“You have yet to impress me,” said Rumlow. The usual slight hoarseness to his voice had gotten low and gravelly and Vivienne knew that he was pissed. “Your efforts have been average at best and average doesn’t fucking cut it.”  
Vivienne gritted her teeth, starting her push-ups and trying her best to tune out Rumlow’s criticism. She sank to ninety degrees and pushed back up again, the upward push making her a little dizzy. She decided she was probably still a little drunk from the night before and suddenly she wished she hadn’t gone out with Clint.  
“If you want to stick around, agent, you had better get your ass in gear and work for it. These things don’t just get given to you.”  
Vivienne shook her head to herself. Rumlow saw her do it.  
“Do you have something to say to me, Donahue?”  
Vivienne bit her lip, continuing to shake her head. She felt Rumlow’s boot between her shoulder blades.  
“Down further.”  
Vivienne glared at the floor.  
“I said down.”  
“What the fuck?” Vivienne smacked her fist against the gym floor, moving out from beneath Rumlow’s boot and pushing herself to her feet. “Did you do this to everyone or just me? Please just tell me! I wanna know because I’m starting to feel like this is just one big fucked-up joke. You yell at me when I’m wrong, but you don’t show me how to do it right—it’s like you’re just not trying or maybe you just don’t care.”  
Rumlow looked taken aback by her outburst. He most likely hadn’t been expecting her to get up and yell back at him and it took him a minute to register that she was doing just that.  
Vivienne pushed her fingers through her hair. “I don’t think you realize how much this means to me and having you come in every day and tell me that I’m doing a shitty job…I’d do a helluva lot better if I knew I was actually getting somewhere—“  
“That’s enough, Donahue.” Rumlow’s tone was firm, but it didn’t hold as much anger as Vivienne had expected it to.  
“I didn’t excel at the academy to start wading into horseshit in SHIELD…I worked hard…you have no idea.” Vivienne paused every few words, feeling her diaphragm heave. She pushed a fist into her stomach as if that could stop the convulsions. “I doubt the rest of your treasured team went through your shit.”  
“That’s enough.”  
Vivienne looked up at Rumlow, but his expression was unreadable. His eyes skimmed over her and she could swear that he could see every little bead of sweat that clung to her pale, damp forehead.  
“You’re dehydrated.” He said conclusively.   
“I know that. Sir.”  
Rumlow looked at her hard and Vivienne felt his eyes cut into her.  
“Go get some water and come back in ten.”  
Vivienne eyed him, not entirely sure if he was serious. Rumlow turned away from her and wrote something down on his clipboard  
“But wh--?”  
“Go. Now.”  
Vivienne didn’t hesitate the second time. She left, wondering briefly what she had just done.

When she came back into the gym, Rumlow has throwing mats down onto the ground. They were big and thick and the air displacement from them hitting the hard gym floor made a whooshing smack. Vivienne walked forward to the setup, wiping excess water off of her upper lip. She watched Rumlow move the giant floor pieces, his arm and back muscles flexing and releasing. Vivienne hadn’t noticed his muscular body structure, until now, the day he apparently saw fit to get up from his chair.   
Rumlow glanced at her, nodding to the last mat in the corner of the gym. “Go get that.”  
Vivienne did as she was told. After getting a water break she was starting to feel much better and the break in the usual routine had begun to take her mind off of the dull throbbing in her head. She was curious as to what Rumlow had planned—she was fully expecting some sort of repercussion for her outburst and she wondered if this was how he would punish her. He would punish her with mats. Vivienne made a face and grabbed the last mat. It was big and thick and there was some sort of sticky red stain near her face when she carried it. Vivienne looked at it and noticed a few hairs clinging to the red spot.  
“Oh gross,” she muttered, pulling her face away from it. She was pretty sure it was blood. She slammed the mat blood-side-down next to the others when she got there and Rumlow brushed off his hands, wrapping his knuckles in a foamy black tape. He passed the roll to her when he was finished and she took it, wrapping up her own hands.  
“Alright,” said Rumlow. “Shoes off.”  
Vivienne pulled at the back of her sneakers.   
“I’m starting you on your hand-to-hand today. I think we’ve done enough of the physical health training for now.” Rumlow stepped out of his own shoes.   
Vivienne smiled and suppressed a giggle, forgetting for the moment that she was probably still in trouble.   
Rumlow stopped what he was doing, which was placing his shoes away from the mats and looked back at her. “What.”  
Vivienne nodded to his socks. “Look at that little toe. It’s, like, struggling for freedom.”  
Rumlow looked down at the hole in his sock which his little toe was almost all the way out of. “There was a nail in my apartment. My sock—“  
Vivienne waited for him to go on, amused, but he stopped.   
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Pay attention to how I move and you do the same. Forget about the sock.”  
“I’m trying.”  
Rumlow moved around her, his stance crouched and his center lowered. Vivienne mimicked him.  
“I would assume that the academy offered martial arts classes?” asked Rumlow.  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “ I graduated with Aikido and dabbled in wrestling.”  
Rumlow nodded. “Alright. Take me down, Agent. You make the first move.”  
Vivienne put her hands up, but she shook her head. “Hell, no. I would embarrass myself. You look way too dangerous.”  
Rumlow sighed, lifting his stance a little. “So I can count on you to ditch the team in the field if someone comes at you who ‘looks too dangerous’? There are more guys that may fit that description for you than you might think.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Not what I meant.”  
Rumlow lowered again. “Just fucking hit me.”  
Vivienne gave him a look. He was circling now, his hands up, ready to deflect anything she might throw at him, but she didn’t know where to begin.  
“Donahue,” said Rumlow slowly. “You’re wasting my time. Every single day this past week had been like this. You’re lazy and uncommitted. I could ask you to do something simple and you would find a way to completely screw it up. You have no guts, kid, and you sure as hell don’t belong on the STRIKE team. The men—“  
Vivienne swung at him, a mock cross to cover the uppercut that now hammered into Rumlow’s jaw.   
Rumlow twisted a little with the force of the punch and when he recovered he was smiling. “There she is…”  
Vivienne came at him again, but he deflected her with a swift cut downward with his following hand. Vivienne tried to get back again in order to re-strategize, but Rumlow had grabbed her wrist and he went through the motions again of how he had deflected her. “You see that? Deflection of your force without having to take the brunt of your swing.”  
Vivienne committed the move to her memory. Rumlow let go of her and backed up a little. “You block me now.”  
Rumlow came at her faster than she thought he would and she surprised herself by cutting his swing away like he had done to her.   
“Good.”  
Vivienne grinned. “My God. A compliment.”  
“An affirmation,” said Rumlow. “You haven’t reached compliment status.”  
Vivienne came at him, but Rumlow caught her arm and twisted her into an uncomfortable lock. Vivienne waited. Rumlow didn’t let go.  
“Well?” he said. “Get yourself out of it.”  
Vivienne’s mind raced as to how she might pull that off without breaking at least one bone. She leaned forward, squatting a little with Rumlow leaning in behind her. She swiftly jumped back, smacking into him and sending them both to the floor. Though she was smaller than him, her weight was still too much for his diaphragm to handle all at once and she heard his gasp as the breath was knocked from his lungs. She felt his grip loosen then and she pulled away from him. She had barely regained her footing when Rumlow found his and she was too caught off guard by his quick recovery that she didn’t think to block him as he charged for her waist. He pinned her to the ground and she struggled against his grip, gritting her teeth.  
“What are you, Donahue?” He barked.  
Vivienne grunted, his weight compressing her. She planted her feet on the floor and thrusted her hips upward, throwing him off balance. She slid out from under him, springing at him when he had begun to turn around and face her.   
He attempted to block her, but she had already caught him before he could fully stabilize his stance. Vivienne pushed herself on top of him after they fell, keeping most of her weight on his chest. He attempted to thrust his legs into a bridge, but she was too far away from his hips for the move to work and she had stabilized her legs to where the his movement barely affected her. She felt him try to bring his knee under her with a grunt, but she twisted her hip to prevent it and grabbed his closest arm off of the floor. She breathed hard. “I’m a weapon,” she said, looking down at him.   
Rumlow looked like he might smile, but it was the shadow of an intention and it disappeared after a minute. Vivienne released him and he got to his feet.   
“We might make you one yet.”

 

That week went by slightly better than the first. Vivienne was wary for the first couple days that followed, still fully expecting some sort of ramifications for her outburst. She decided halfway through the week that maybe there wouldn’t be one and that eased away some of her self-inflicted stress. Rumlow still acted the part that he had when he had first started training her, tempting her to stray from the ‘weapon’ maxim, but Vivienne had begun to catch on to it and it no longer seemed to be a problem. She had seen and somewhat interacted with the STRIKE team one time during that week and that was because Rumlow needed to talk to them before they left for the day, which involved them coming into the gym while he was training her. She had been doing push-ups the whole time. Rumlow hadn’t told her to stop before he had started his conference with the team and so she hadn’t stopped. She had looked up occasionally and every time she did, her eyes locked to Henley’s who seemed to be watching her with contempt. After Rumlow had finished discussing whatever it was with them, Cooper had come over to talk to her. He had a toothpick hanging from his lips.  
“How goes it, girlie?”  
Vivienne paused to look up at him. “Just dandy.”  
Cooper squatted to her level. “Are you wearing per-fume?”   
Vivienne didn’t know what to make of his question. “I took a shower,” she offered.  
“Hm. When are you gonna train with us big boys?”  
Vivienne went down for another push-up. “I dunno. Why are you asking me? Ask Rumlow.”  
“Well he said it’ll be a bit yet.”  
“Well there you go, then.” Vivienne had lost track of what number she was on.   
“Katsu still wants to kill you.”  
Vivienne watched as Katsu Henley made his way out of the gym. “That’s nice.”  
“Yup. I was just wondering when you’re gonna train with us because Katsu there’s been talkin’ shit and I’m damn near sick of hearing it. It was funny the first few days.”  
Vivienne gave Cooper a look before she went down for another push-up.  
“What? It was, but now it’s just irritating.” Snorted Cooper. “I just want him to either floor you or be floored by you.”  
“That’s poetic.”  
Cooper straightened up, re-tucking his black shirt into his tactical pants. “My momma always said I had poetic potential.” He sighed and nodded to her before heading away. “You hang tight, there, Donahue.”


	5. Hellbender Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne starts feeling a little better about the STRIKE team after training for a few weeks with Rumlow. She makes attempts to regain her social life and maintain her friendship with Clint, but she is quickly swept back into the work current after the STRIKE team returns from a last-minute mission with consequences that might provide Vivienne with an "in". Vivienne fixes up her high-rent shabby apartment. Clint mooches pizza. Brock is uncomfortable with goodbyes. Enjoy!

Meeting Clint at Charlie’s at the end of the week had unofficially become a weekly thing. Rumlow often had meetings that he had to attend on Saturdays and so eventually, after Vivienne had managed to somehow wriggle her way to what Rumlow considered to be ‘good enough’, they had both decided that Saturdays would be a day off. Vivienne had one-day weekends now and she was thrilled. She didn’t make the mistake of drinking too much on Saturday nights anymore, which led to better Sundays all around.   
Vivienne had finally started to feel somewhat at ease with her situation. She no longer felt isolated—Clint had introduced her to some of his other friends; one of them was a sharp redheaded agent whose smirk said more than her words did and Vivienne decided that she liked her a lot. Amongst his other acquaintances she had met, she also enjoyed the company of one of Clint’s neighbors, a mother with very polite children, and Clint’s dog, who, Clint insisted, wasn’t really Clint’s dog, but he fed him and housed him so Vivienne made the decision that he was, in fact, Clint’s dog.   
Clint often came over to help Vivienne make her shabby downtown apartment a little more like home over the past couple weekends. Vivienne made a habit of ordering pizza for such occasions and they hung curtains and fixed the crumbling, mildew-infested cabinets until they got bored or Vivienne’s phone died and they couldn’t play music anymore, then they retreated to Charlie’s for a rewarding end to their night.   
Vivienne felt much more accomplished at work, mostly due to the fact that she actually felt like she was doing something. The ‘something’ was mostly opting to get thrown around on mats while Rumlow taught her new offensive hand-to-hand combat skills, but the fact that he paid attention to her and that he learned and helped her embrace her own fighting techniques made her feel like he was starting to accept her, which eased her overall feelings about STRIKE.   
Vivienne rarely saw the rest of SHIELD. She came in while the night-time crew was leaving and left when they were arriving. She didn’t feel like she was necessarily a part of the daytime ‘secret agent file-decrypting sunglass-wearing throat-punching’ image she had had of what she might be involved with when she joined SHIELD, but she definitely felt better about the path she had decided to take. 

Vivienne stared at the ceiling in her room. Moonlight slipped across the plaster from her open window and illuminated the watermark that raced above her bed. She had just texted Clint, thanking him again for the beers he had bought her that evening before setting her phone down for the night on her dresser. The street below hummed with beehive purpose and Vivienne listened to the chorus of honking horns and the distant wailing whisper of sirens. She went over the past week in her mind, revisiting her small victories. She closed her eyes, imagining what might happen the next day—what she might say or do to impress Rumlow enough to earn his praise or how she might earn his comradeship through trading witty comments. She smiled a little thinking about how far she had come from her first day and about what might lie ahead for her. She slept peacefully that night for the first time in what seemed like months.

The gym was dark when Vivienne arrived the next morning and the lack of her S.O. made it clear to her that the day would stray from the norm. After she had paused, going back to Friday night in her mind, trying to remember if Rumlow had mentioned a change in schedule, she left the gym, deciding that he hadn’t. She ventured down the hall to Gym 3 where Rumlow’s office was. She opened the door and narrowed her eyes, adjusting to the sudden brightness of the illuminated gym. Rumlow stood near the middle of the floor, seemingly in deep conversation with Rollins. The two sported tactical gear—black clothing underneath thick black Kevlar vests and heavily pocketed pants that tucked into their worn combat boots. Rumlow had his arms crossed. He seemed to be considering something that Rollins had told him. He looked over when Vivienne when she came in and he said something to Rollins, which warranted a nod from the swarthy agent. Rumlow took his leave of him and walked over to Vivienne, who was thoroughly mesmerized by the concept of their attire and their discussion.   
“Agent,” he said. It was just barely distinguishable as a greeting.  
“Sir,” greeted Vivienne. “What’s up?”  
Rumlow put his fingers through his thick dark hair and Vivienne noticed the creases deepening in the corners of his eyes and the way his mouth pulled at the corner, signifying that he was bottling stress. Vivienne had seen the look a few times and now she recognized it, pairing its occurrences with all of the other times he had made that face.   
“Something came up,” Rumlow said. “I gotta take the team out. It’s gonna be today and tomorrow.”  
“Okay,” said Vivienne. “So what does that mean?”  
Rumlow sighed. “It means that I won’t be here for those two days, so you’re going to have to occupy your time with something else while we’re gone.”  
Vivienne felt disappointment seep into her shoulders, weighing them down. She wished more than anything that she had been suiting up with them and preparing for a mission. She must have given herself away because Rumlow folded his arms uncomfortably.   
“You can’t go, kid. I don’t have time to drag you back to safety if you get shot. You’re not team-ready.”   
“Yeah I know.”  
Rumlow looked at her. “It won’t be too long from now.”  
Vivienne nodded, but she looked away and just past his shoulder. Rollins watched their conversation, clearly waiting for Rumlow to finish it up. She met his gaze and tried not to look too disheartened. He looked back at her with a solid brow and maintained composure.  
“Don’t soften up while we’re gone.” Said Rumlow. Vivienne almost sensed a thread of humor. She gave him a sideways smile and hitched her duffle bag up a little further on her shoulder.  
“Nah,” she said. “It won’t happen. Don’t get shot.”  
Rumlow smiled, the first Vivienne had seen yet. It wasn’t a big one, but it creased one corner of his mouth and relaxed the intensity of his gaze. “Nah.” He said. “It won’t happen.”

Vivienne began her day on a treadmill in the sweaty gym that the rest of SHIELD used—Gym 1. It was a lot bigger then the other two gyms and it had two levels: the lower level was used on one end for weights and the other end had a large lap pool, the upper level had an indoor track that circled the outer wall and several ellipticals, bikes, and treadmills. Vivienne jogged amongst other assorted agents, many from different teams, and people-watched. It seemed like the men on the STRIKE team were some of the most impressive when it came to sheer size and power, but there were many other remarkable agents that came close and Vivienne wondered occasionally, when one ran by, which group they belonged to.   
She had texted Clint to let him know what was up before remembering that he would be out in the field for a few days and he probably wouldn’t return her text. She watched people come in as the morning progressed and after finishing her run on the treadmill, she made her way down to the weight section.   
“Donahue!”  
Vivienne had been about to reach the weight rack before she heard her name called. She turned and scanned the sea of agents. A hand waved and Vivienne’s eye was immediately drawn to Clint’s friend, who he had just introduced her to the week before.   
“Hey, Romanov,” Vivienne smiled in greeting. She didn’t know the woman too well, but she was glad when her name rolled easily off the tip of her tongue.   
Romanov weaved through the people around her, light and easy on her feet. She smiled back at Vivienne when she came closer. “Hey, what’s up?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “The STRIKE team had a mission and I suppose, because I’m new, I got voted off the island. So now I’m here.”  
“Eh,” said Romanov. “It probably wasn’t a good one anyways or else I would have heard something about it through the grapevine by now.”  
Vivienne picked up a disc from the weight rack. “Can’t wait until I have enough connections to know what’s going on. Half the time I don’t even know what’ the game plan is when I come to work.” She nodded at the weight in her hands. “Wanna lift with me?”  
Romanov was already tying her hair into a short ponytail. “I was just about to ask if you minded.”  
“Not at all. It’s a lot better when there’s someone to talk to.”   
“And I think I would enjoy spending my time with you over any of there self-centered oafs any day,” said Natasha, looking around at the sweaty grim-faced men who exercised about them.  
Vivienne snorted, handing a weight to Natasha. “You should meet the STRIKE team. Clint told me they’d all be assholes and so far he’s been right.” She paused, scanning the room for an open bench. “Which is totally wrong.”  
Natasha smirked. “I know what you mean.”

They benched for a little while, switching up positions and spotting for one another. The more they chatted, the more Natasha intrigued Vivienne. She didn’t reveal much about herself and most of her comments and stories pertained to her work relationships, but not to her work or her personal life. They talked a lot about Clint. He was a common factor and so he was easy to talk about. If Natasha did spill anything about herself it was unintentional, but Vivienne was perceptive and she knew at once by the way she talked about Clint and the little secret smile that lingered in the corners of the agent’s mouth that maybe Natasha and Clint were more than friends. It had seemed like they had worked with each other for a while.   
Vivienne wanted to ask Romanov directly about their involvement out of curiosity, but she didn’t feel like she knew enough about her to be that straightforward. They had just finished talking about Agent Barton while they stacked the weights back onto the shelf and Natasha had trailed off, seemingly lost in a memory.  
“Clint’s a good guy,” Vivienne offered.   
“Yeah,” said Natasha. “He is.”  
Vivienne left a pause for her to go on, but Natasha turned to her, smiling.   
“I’ve got a meeting,” she said. “But hey—Anytime the guys have got you at the end of your rope, give me a call and we can do this again.”  
Natasha exchanged phones with Vivienne and they saved each other as a contact.  
“Sounds like a plan,” said Vivienne. “I’m still trying to spin a friend web—I’ll let you know as soon as I get my hands on a free afternoon and a bottle of wine. I feel like we both have a lot of stories.”  
Natasha flashed her a smile. “Sounds good, Donahue. I’ll see you around.”  
Vivienne smiled back. “See ya.”  
The redheaded agent turned and quickly disappeared amongst the masses, leaving no trace but her phone number to let Vivienne know she had even been there.

 

The next day flew. Vivienne had barely been keeping track of the time, mostly because she spent the greater portion of it at her apartment slumped over on her couch with a bag of chips, a blanket, and five straight hours of the latest season of her zombie show on her laptop. She pretty bad about it afterward and told herself that she should hop on a treadmill before the STRIKE team came back the next day, but she ended up crashing above her sheets on her bed with her phone in one hand and an empty beer bottle in the other. Her body had gotten into a routine and the moment it was broken with the unexpected leave, it took advantage of the extra time by shutting down early that night.   
Vivienne awoke the next morning almost a half hour before her alarm went off—she was, for once, well-rested and had never felt more ready to take on whatever her S.O. had cooked up for her that day. 

When she arrived at the Triskelion, she greeted the security guards with a smile and didn’t waste any time making her way to the gym. Vivienne couldn’t hide her excitement as she reached the door and she bit her lip as she opened it to try to conceal her cheerfulness.   
The gym was dark. The floor was clear of mats and Rumlow was nowhere to be seen again.  
Something dropped in Vivienne’s stomach and churned there with an ache that made its way to her chest. She hoped that it wouldn’t be a replay of last time; she had managed to hide the brunt of her disappointment last time, but she didn’t know if she could do the same again so soon. She let the door swing shut and she couldn’t help but to drag her feet a little on her way to Gym 3.   
She pulled open the door when she reached it and walked inside. It didn’t register at first what was going on, but the sight of the whole team in their PT attire relieved her a little. It wasn’t another mission. The men were all standing around in a half circle a little ways away. Only one was missing. They didn’t notice her walk in.  
“Jesus Christ—!” It was Cooper, doubling over with a chuckle and clasping Rollins’ shoulder for balance. “Oh God. That boy howled!”  
Rollins let a smile curl in the corner of his mouth as he folded his arms.   
“Do it—ha—do it again, Crue. Oh, Lord” Cooper wiped at his eyes.  
Crue grinned and clutched at his leg, theatrically imitating being shot. “GUUUYS.” He wailed, unable to suppress a hint of laughter that cut into his act. “They got me!”   
Rollins chuckled with Cooper, shaking his head. “Better not ever let him hear you do that.”  
Crue waved a hand nonchalantly. “Eh, the guy’s like four feet tall.”  
Cooper slapped his thigh with a laugh and Rollins finally turned and noticed Vivienne watching their exchange.   
“Hey,” said Vivienne.   
Rollins nodded at her and Cooper and Crue turned around to see what had distracted him.   
Vivienne approached the group, ready and armed with a smile. “How was the mission?”  
Cooper shook his finger at her. “You know we can’t talk about that lil’ miss.”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Well I didn’t ask you what you did.”   
Cooper nodded. “True. Well, in that case it went well ‘till Henley almost got his butt-cheek shot off.”  
“Wait what?”  
Cooper grinned and indicated a couple inches of space with his finger and thumb. “Missed it by about that much. A little further and he wouldn’t have had that toned be-hind of his that he keeps bragging about.”  
Rollins made a face at Cooper. “You do the same thing.”  
“It’s my best ass-et.”  
Rollins shook his head and exchanged a look with Crue.   
“Either way,” said Cooper. “The mission was successful. We don’t got a losing streak, so don’t you break our record now, Donahue.”  
“I won’t.” Vivienne folded her arms in mock indifference. “So where’s Henley now?”   
“Probably getting that bullet picked outta him, but he won’t be back for a little while.”  
“Well that’s really just too bad,” said Vivienne. She barely held her sarcasm in check.

Vivienne looked over when the door to Agent Rumlow’s office opened. He was also in his black PT garb and it seemed like he hadn’t taken the time that Vivienne suspected he usually did to style his hair that morning. She wondered how late they had gotten in the day before.   
Rumlow addressed her presence with a nod as he did the rest of the group. “Donahue, Boys.” The little creases were there in the corners of his eyes and an instinctual smile any other person might have was replaced by a grimace on his lips. “We’re down one for now, but it presents an opportunity for us to invite Donahue to join the team in our regular training sequence.”  
Vivienne felt the men’s eyes on her, but she didn’t give way to the excitement that pounded in her chest with his announcement. Rumlow didn’t seem to linger on the news of her addition, choosing instead to focus on the commencement of the day’s activities.   
“It’s Tuesday, boys,” he continued. “So range first, field play after. I’ve introduced Donahue to our basic formations, but since we didn’t have more people until now, we haven’t had the chance to play them out as well. They got the sim fixed so we’ll use that this afternoon and go to the park next week.”   
Rumlow looked round at the men and Vivienne saw him reading them like he did her sometimes. She wondered if they had ever felt so transparent in his presence.  
“Sound good?”  
“Yes, Sir.” Came the collective response.   
“Good.” Rumlow turned and the team followed him out of the gym on the way to the shooting range.   
Vivienne had seen the range briefly, but she had never fired a weapon there. It was an impressive space—large with reinforced walls and different lanes for specific shooting sequences and firearms. She didn’t doubt that SHIELD dropped quite a bit of dough on the place, considering how new it had appeared when Rumlow had given her a quick walk-through. It had been a couple months since she had last used a firing range, but she had picked up shooting quickly and had excelled at it at the academy. She hoped she hadn’t gotten rusty.  
Rollins walked beside her on the way there. He most likely hadn’t intended to, but Rumlow was leading the way and Cooper and Crue were behind them, making it a more convenient place to walk beside her.   
Vivienne studied him, choosing to be ignorant of whatever unease her obvious attention caused him. He looked straight ahead.  
“Hey, so, I saw you one day at the coffee shop in the lobby. Y’know—the one with the really shitty coffee?”   
Rollins finally looked down at her.  
“You skipped right to the front of the line and it was a really long line.”  
There was a silence. Maybe Rollins didn’t see her point, but he looked away from her again.  
“So?” Vivienne prodded. “What’s up with that? You got VIP access or something?”  
“Nope.”  
Vivienne waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. She rolled her eyes, letting him have his silence.  
When they finally came to the indoor firing range, Rumlow opened the door and held it, reading off their assigned lanes as the team passed him to walk through.   
“Rollins—three, Donahue—two, Cooper—four, Crue—five.”  
He let the door slam behind him. The sound barely resonated due to the impressive acoustics built to swallow echoes and halt the intensity of gunshots. Vivienne looked up to see the lane numbers indicated on hanging placards above them. They were the only ones in the gym and so all of the lanes were open.   
A little further back behind the lanes was a large screen of bulletproof glass that protected a huge arsenal of weapons. Handprint scanners dotted the case in different sections and Vivienne guessed that only certain sections could be opened by certain people. Rumlow made a beeline for a cache of M4A1s behind one of the furthest cases and the rest of the team followed him and waited as he placed his hand on the scanner.   
“Confirm unlock weapons case fifteen under Brock M Rumlow?”  
“Affirmative,” said Rumlow to the computer. The voice recognition kicked in and the case withdrew its lock. Agent Rumlow reached into the case and handed a gun to each of the men, who took them and turned back to the range to find their lanes. Vivienne waited for hers, but Rumlow closed the door of the case.  
“You’re gonna shoot,” he assured her. “But you’re gonna help me get ammo for the guys first.”  
She helped Rumlow retrieve the ammo from another smaller room, which was once again protected by handprint scanners and voice recognition.   
After helping pass out the ammo boxes, Vivienne returned to the weapons case and Rumlow passed her a M4A1 of her own before taking his.   
“I’m going to just assume that you’re not going to make me re-teach you gun basics.” Said Rumlow. “I read your files. Decent marksmanship, Donahue.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Thanks.”  
“But decent is not what I’m looking for. It—“  
“It doesn’t cut it, yeah I know.”   
Rumlow raised an eyebrow at her.  
“..Sir.” She added. “I know it doesn’t cut it, Sir.”  
Rumlow tilted his chin back a little, looking down his nose at her. “They must have torn you apart in basic training with the attitude you have, Donahue. Maybe it helped you cope there, but it doesn’t belong here, so stow it.”  
“Stowed, Sir.”  
Rumlow blinked at her, but walked past her instead of addressing her childish persistence.  
Vivienne followed him down past the men. They were all busy loading their clips and donning ear and eye protection. Vivienne found her own hanging in the lane stall for her. She set her gun down beside the ammo box she had left for herself and put on her glasses and headset. The headset had a tiny microphone extension, which was part of the comm line that linked all of the headsets. When she put it on, she immediately heard what she assumed was Rollins’ chuckle and Cooper’s voice.   
“Fine. A beer. But not a single one can be outside the black,” said Cooper.  
“Easy.” Said Rollins.  
That was followed by a snort from Cooper. “Don’t get a hernia trying.”  
“Fuck off, Coop.”  
Vivienne smiled to herself, squinting at the fresh target paper that hung on the opposite side of the range from her. From that distance she couldn’t see the black very well, but she assumed it was the middle ring. She finished loading her clip and set it on the stand, assuming that the procedure here would be the same as it was at the academy.  
“Alright boys…And girl,” came Rumlow’s voice. “Secure your clips.”  
Vivienne grabbed her clip and pushed it into place on her gun. She smacked it with her palm, eliciting a satisfying click as it snapped into place.   
“Donahue, listen up. We go through the magazine and correct ourselves as we go. If you weren’t a decent shot you wouldn’t be here, so I’m going with the assumption that you know by now how to correct yourself.”  
Vivienne adjusted her mic. “Yes, Sir.”   
“Good.”  
Vivienne waited, her gun pointed downrange.   
“Guns up and ready.”  
She raised the M4A1 and settled it in the hollow of her shoulder.  
“We’re going for precision today, boys, so aim small and take your time, but don’t be a granny about it. Let me know when you’re done.” Rumlow paused. “A simple affirmative will do—save your comments for later.”  
Vivienne waited.  
“Alright. Safeties off, let your paper have it.”


	6. Hellbender Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne is given a spot on the STRIKE team, but she has yet to accompany the team on her first mission. Not everyone's happy about STRIKE's new addition... Vivienne doesn't back down. Rumlow yells at Henley. Henley acts a fool. Enjoy!

Towards the middle of the next week, Rollins still hadn’t earned his beer from Cooper. Vivienne quickly caught on that Cooper was definitely the marksman of the group, regardless of the fact that they were all exceptional shots. The guy just didn’t miss. She wished that she could say the same for herself, but it took a great deal of correction through her scope before she could control her scatter. The second day was better and Vivienne was more used to the gun itself, which she had never used before. She managed to cluster her shots a little closer to one another than she had the first time and when Rumlow came by the second day to review her marksmanship he didn’t have much to say, which gave Vivienne some satisfaction.  
The afternoons were spent in the sim, which was a massive room filled with obstacles and structures, not unlike a paintball arena. They wore helmets that simulated scenarios by level and projected them onto the team’s collective face screens, which displayed the virtual battle ground and their opponents. It was pretty much like an interactive first-person shooter, and Vivienne loved it when Rumlow finally gave her the chance to participate—mostly because the tech was so realistic and it interacted with the obstacles in the room to give it a credible effectiveness. The team used the advanced program to practice their offensive formations and it was handy because Rumlow could easily pause the program to yell at them for doing something wrong, which he often did. Most of the time he yelled at Vivienne.  
The first time she went to the sim, Rumlow had insisted that she sit it out to get the feel for how they trained with the tech. Vivienne hadn’t exactly known how she might go about studying their tactics, though, because Rumlow had forgotten to provide her with a helmet. To the naked eye, they were just a bunch of guys running around and crouching in a dimly lit room. She decided not to bring up her lack of equipment to Rumlow, though—the results were just too priceless, especially the yelling, which, when wearing a helmet, was drowned out by the simulated gunshot noises, but without, it was a bunch of sweaty guys shouting into the silent space, save the sound of boot scuffles. She recorded it on her phone and saved it to show to Clint at the end of the week.  
Rumlow eventually let Vivienne practice with them and he assigned her Henley’s old spot on the formation, which was usually close enough to Rumlow that she could sense his body language and she knew before he had the chance to yell at her over the headset when to lower the volume on her own helmet to make his critique less infuriating. Before long, Vivienne began to get the hang of it. She knew where she needed to be and when she needed to be there when a particular formation was called and she prided herself when she didn’t have to look to Rumlow for help anymore deciding what was the best cover, or which target to pick first, or when to move forward.  
In her free time, which usually ended up being somewhere after ten when she got back to her apartment, she immersed herself in tactical studies and reviewed how she could have done something differently that day to make the outcome more preferable for her and the team.  
PT was getting easier; it seemed much less intense when she exercised with the team than when she had been Rumlow’s sole focus. It was still difficult because she was expected to perform similarly to the men, who had years of training and physical prowess over her, but Rumlow had prepared her sufficiently, anticipating the variance. Maybe all of the groggy morning jogs and the following athletics had paid off. Vivienne grudgingly admitted to herself that they probably had.

The weeks seemed to go by faster now with her routine that grew from the rigid agenda that the STRIKE team had. She had almost forgotten that the team did anything else other than train at the Triskelion—it had been several weeks since they had come back from their last mission. She had already been assigned a locker in the locker room and she had her own SHIELD M4A1 that was registered under her name since then and it was becoming a foreign concept that they might eventually venture outside of the Triskelion. 

Vivienne entered the gym one morning and was about to walk across to the locker room until she heard a familiar voice coming from Rumlow’s office.  
“Wait. So you what—??”  
She whirled around at the sound of it and she saw his back in the doorway to Rumlow’s office. It was Katsu Henley.  
Vivienne walked silently by, careful not to be seen. She eavesdropped as she passed.  
“First of all, you can cut the tone, Henley.” That was Rumlow. He sounded pissed. “Just cause you got shot in the ass, that doesn’t give you any leeway to talk to a superior like that. I can send you right back outta here.”  
“Yeah, well, all due respect, you replaced me with a ditzy amateur—what am I supposed to do, accept that?”  
There was a silence and Vivienne strained to hear Rumlow’s low growl.  
“Yes. You’re supposed to fucking accept that, Henley. Donahue is still in training and I’d rather have her in your spot in formation so that it’ll be easy for me to instruct her.” Rumlow’s voice got louder with each word he uttered. “In the mean time, if the team gets called out, you can run tech, since we were lacking that last mission and that’s the whole fucking reason you got shot apart from your dumb ass not being where it was supposed to fucking be!”  
There was a silence and Vivienne hurried her pace toward the locker room in case Henley decided to turn around.  
“Jesus Christ—I never thought I’d say this, but I wish Brady was here so I could have a reason to KICK YOU OFF OF STRIKE! SHAPE UP!”  
Vivienne disappeared behind the locker room door just in time to cut out Rumlow’s last bark. She went back to her locker, trying not to dwell too much on how much it meant to her that Rumlow defended her place on the team. She needed to think instead about how she would handle the Henley situation because she knew there would be one.  
She went to her locker and opened it, pulling out her gym clothes and sneakers. She heard a couple of the men talking on the other side of the locker room. She made out Cooper and Crue’s voices, both immersed in a conversation about some superbowl commercial from the past season. Vivienne quickly slipped out of her street clothes and into her PT attire. The locker room door opened again, but when she glanced around the corner, it was Rollins who entered. The men greeted him and he yawned and stretched, disappearing to go to his own locker.  
Vivienne felt adrenaline rush into her from the anticipation of the possibility of it having been Henley rather than Rollins who graced everyone with his presence. She tried to push it out of her system; it was beginning to make the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It was Friday, so they would start out with PT and hand-to-hand combat training. She slipped into her gym shoes and grabbed her hand-wrapping tape, tossing her phone into her locker and shutting the door. She walked around the corner just as the door to the locker room opened. 

Henley froze and so did she. His muscles were rigid and his shiny jet black hair cast a shadow over his eyes from the fluorescent bulbs, but she could see his displeasure. The moment threw a silence over the locker room that seemed to ring incessantly in Vivienne’s ears. Anything witty that she might have planned for his return and this moment evaded her and she couldn’t for the life of her think of what to say.  
“Henley’s back,” said Cooper, breaking the silence and elbowing Rollins in mock surprise.  
Cooper’s comment seemed to free up the venom in Henley’s throat. “What the hell are you looking at?”  
Vivienne shrugged, looking at the men, who watched, and then back at Henley. “You, I guess. I was on my way out and you’re kinda standing in the door, so…”  
“So what?” said Henley. He squared his stance in front of the door, making it clear that he didn’t want her to leave yet. “It’s not like you showing up automatically reserves you a spot on this team.”  
Vivienne stood her ground. “I know that.”  
“Then why are you still here?” Henley chuckled and glanced over at the men, looking for some reflection of his own humorless bemusement in them to back him.  
Vivienne didn’t know if any of them agreed with him or not, but at this point she didn’t really care. She had earned herself a place on the team and she hadn’t dragged herself through the rocky initiation the whole time to give up because someone didn’t like her.  
She sighed. “Look, Henley, I’m sorry somebody shot you in the ass—“  
Henley clenched his teeth. “I got shot in the fucking leg.”  
“Ok, then. You got shot in your ‘fucking leg’. I’m sorry that happened, but I’m not going anywhere.”  
She walked forward, giving Henley plenty of time to move out of the way of the door, but he didn’t. She was closer than she was comfortable with to him when she finally stopped and she hoped that the awkwardness of the short space between them would force him to move. It didn’t.  
Someone whistled behind her and she assumed it was Cooper, trying to break the tension again with humor.  
Vivienne looked across at Henley. He was at her eye level. “Move.”  
Henley didn’t budge. “You think you can just walk in here and play with the big boys, yojo? Let me tell you something. You don’t belong here. You don’t have the guts. It’s not glitter and glam, its sweat and blood.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “Your butt-cheek blood. Now move.”  
Henley’s jaw flexed. “You know what bitches like you are good for?”  
Vivienne felt her fists instinctually curl. “I’m warning you. Move now.”  
Henley grinned and nodded at the men who watched in anticipation every move the two made. “You know what bitches like her are good for?”  
Henley made a grab for her hips and it all happened so fast. The months of training had made a defensive response instinctual, now, and Vivienne was barely aware of her body going through the motions that she had practiced with Rumlow on the mats. Her non-dominant hand swiped down sharply, cutting away the path of his grasp and she lowered a knee before springing upward, driving her dominant fist straight up and into Henley’s jaw.  
Needless to say, he hadn’t been expecting it and the power behind her uppercut threw him back against the locker room door. He grabbed for it, but it was a swinging door, and it simply gave way and let him fall through. He landed heavily in the doorway between the gym and the locker room, effectively blocking the locker room door from closing. Vivienne had watched it all happen and now she looked up and out into the gym. Rumlow stood motionless in the center of the gym, frozen in the act of flipping a piece of paper over his clipboard. His eyes were on Henley first, his mouth a little agape with slack confusion, before they went up to meet Vivienne’s gaze. Vivienne had frozen, too, her stance that she still held incriminating her immediately. Henley fumbled around under her sight line, holding his jaw. He looked back at Rumlow, but Rumlow wasn’t looking at him, so he took the chance to push past Vivienne into the locker room. Vivienne caught the door before it shut.  
“Donahue.” It was a statement, or at least it sounded like it.  
Vivienne felt a chasm open inside of her stomach and her heart pounded. She stood in the doorway still, unsure whether she should walk into the gym or not.  
Rumlow’s eyes were locked to hers and it took all she had not to look away.  
“Come over here.”  
Vivienne Stepped forward and let the door shut behind her. She hesitated before she went on and approached her S.O. “I—well, Henley—I just—“  
“Don’t tell me. I don’t care.”  
Vivienne eyed Rumlow warily. He held her gaze a little longer before continuing to flip through pages on his clipboard.  
“Do you remember what I told you about focus and how your eyes never leave your opponent?”  
Vivienne watched him going through his papers, wondering how this might end up in some sort of punishment. She was thoroughly caught off guard. “Uh…yeah?”  
“Then why the hell did you stop and look up at me? You took your eyes off him and he could have had the chance to wipe the floor with you. Don’t let your opponent have that chance. You finish it.”  
Vivienne was speechless. She waited for Rumlow to follow it up with a reprimand and ‘just kidding’ or something, but it didn’t come. She just decked one of his men and he didn’t seem upset about it at all.  
He looked back over at her when he didn’t hear her respond and a smile crossed his lips. “Good swing, Kid.”

After that morning, Vivienne didn’t really have too much trouble with Henley anymore. There was the occasional glare and every once in a while he would add an under-the-breath comment, but there were no more threats and he definitely didn’t touch her again. Vivienne knew that if there was another problem, it was highly unlikely that Rumlow would side with Henley, as proven by the incident, and she knew that Henley was well aware of that, too. The team regarded her differently; Cooper started taking her opinion a little more seriously and hell, even Rollins brought her a coffee when he came back from his usual coffee jaunt.   
“I didn’t know what you wanted,” he had said to her bluntly, handing Vivienne a coffee cup with a drip mark running down the side. “So it’s black.”  
Vivienne had shrugged and patted his arm. “Thanks man. You’re awesome.”  
After she had taken the cup of coffee and left, Rollins had stood there a little while. Maybe he had expected disapproval for having gotten it wrong, but Vivienne was just happy that he had thought of her in the first place.

Vivienne crouched behind a concrete wall in the sim room. The helmets had virtually transported the team to an outpost in the vast Canadian wilderness and the concrete wall she squatted behind had become a stack of timber. She listened to Rumlow ask for a report from Cooper, who was positioned on a perch, which had become a small rocky cliff. Rumlow was on her left, edging forward behind a cropping of virtual pines. Vivienne waited for his go.   
“Cooper, you have visual on your target?”  
“Affirmative.”  
“Rollins, Crue, you are go, I repeat Rollins, Crue, you are go.”  
Vivienne watched as a dark shadow that was Rollins moved stealthily forward, mock M4A1 raised.   
“Hold up!”   
Vivienne turned back to look over at Rumlow. He had straightened up from his cover and had his head tilted a little to the side.  
“Cancel program,” he ordered. The program shut down and the landscape fizzled out and back to the skeleton of the sim room.   
The rest of the men stepped out from their positions all over the room, waiting for a correction or the call for a new formation. Rumlow stood still, listening to something over his comm line. After a minute, he pulled his helmet off.   
“STRIKE, gear up. We’re rolling out at fifteen hundred. I’ll brief you at fourteen hundred in conference room twelve.” He looked over at Vivienne with a nod. “Donahue, you’re coming with me.”

Vivienne followed Rumlow out of the sim room, her heart racing. She wanted to ask him if she was going to get to come this time, but she knew that he would tell her eventually. They started down the hall, but in the opposite direction of the gym.  
“Alright, Donahue—here’s the low-down.” Rumlow said finally, slowing his pace as they approached a door on their left. “I just got word that we’ve got a situation to handle in South America. You should be caught up on all of your vaccinations and travel paperwork, so we just need to catch you up on the rest of your prep.” Rumlow placed his hand on the scanner by the door.   
“Swipe card now.”  
Rumlow swiped his clearance card and the door unlocked.   
“Welcome, Brock M. Rumlow.”  
Rumlow pushed open the door to reveal an extensive room filled with a variety of gear.   
“So you’re saying I get to go this time, Sir?”  
Rumlow looked back at her, squinting. “Yes. You have been training with the team, so I don’t see why we can’t finish the last portion of your induction requirements now.”  
The last portion of the induction requirements was a successful mission under close supervision of the inductee’s S.O. Vivienne felt as if a current of painless rejuvenating energy were passing through her body. Rumlow gave her a small smile before he turned and walked over to a shelf of supplies. Vivienne followed him, already imagining what the rest of the day might bring.   
Rumlow sorted through a stack of uniforms, glancing back at her. “What are you? Medium?”  
“Sure.”  
Rumlow handed her two black shirts with shield emblems on the shoulders and two pairs of black tactical pants.   
“We have a lot of women’s stuff we never use,” he said, seeing Vivienne eye the large stack of clothes.  
“No shit.”  
Rumlow walked over to the other side of the room where there were several piles of accessories.   
“And here’s your Kevlar vest. Keep track of that,” Rumlow said, handing her a heavy black vest. Vivienne allowed him to stack it on top of the pile she had in her arms. “And your gloves.”  
“Sir?” Said Vivienne. Rumlow looked over at her. “I swear you won’t regret having me on the team.” She blurted. “I feel like—“  
“I don’t regret having you, Donahue.”   
Vivienne saw that there wasn’t anything in his eyes to indicate that he was lying. He looked at her for a long time and Vivienne noticed a tiny scar for the first time that ran over one of his cheekbones. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed that before.   
“Well,” she said, caught by the tiny little imperfection. “Then I won’t let you down.”  
Rumlow’s lips parted a little as he seemed to contemplate something. “I wasn’t counting on it. You're a good agent. You might think that I underestimated you the whole time, but I knew from the start that you had potential--even with that incessant mouth of yours.” A smile pulled at the corner of Rumlow's mouth. "I already know you won't let me down." ”  
All of the sudden Vivienne felt a warmth spread through her chest. She didn’t know what brought on the feeling. Maybe it was the excitement, maybe it was the anxiety that began to build up with the fear that she might make a wrong move and jeopardize all of everything. All of everything including the way he was looking at her right now. Or maybe it was just that.   
Vivienne held her breath.  
Rumlow finally turned away from her—slowly, because maybe somehow he knew the confusion Vivienne felt while she was trying to place her emotions.   
“You’ll need an earpiece.” He said. The statement seemed abrupt and it jerked Vivienne back into reality.   
“Yeah,” she said.  
He set an earpiece on top of her pile, glancing at her ears. “I’m going to give you a right side piece. Let me know if you need something different.” He nodded at her. “What is that hippie shit anyways?”  
Vivienne remembered and fingered her ear gauges. “Gauges. And they’re not ‘hippie shit’, Sir.”   
“Yeah, sure.”  
Vivienne smiled.


	7. Hellbender Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne embarks on her first mission with STRIKE. Rollins says more than one word. Rumlow tries to maintain his steely composure. Vivienne shoots people for the first time. SHIELD tech has been stolen (they really need to work on their security).

A few days ago there had been a breach in security in a SHIELD Facility in Panama while an electrical malfunction was being fixed. Several high-value, high-risk items had been stolen and though the attempted seller who had conducted the operation had gone through several fake accounts in order to auction the items, SHIELD tracked down his whereabouts and the location of the items through advanced tracking devices built into several of the weapons. Intel pinpointed the site to be in a barren sector of Brazil and the STRIKE team was already halfway there.   
The facility was more heavily guarded during the night, so it would be a day operation, something STRIKE rarely did. Because of this, stealth and efficiency was of the utmost importance, but the team specialized in those areas and it would be a simple operation.   
Agent Rumlow would monitor and assess Vivienne’s participation in the procedure and write a report that would either seal Vivienne’s permanence on the team, or it would sever everything she had put into it. Needless to say, Vivienne was having a hard time maintaining a practiced stoic composure as she sat in the belly of the quinjet. The awkward heaviness and bulk of her gear seemed magnified by her anxiety and she clutched her rifle with a white-knuckled grip.   
She looked across at Rollins, who was standing across the aisle staring into space. His jaw was slack, giving away no emotion, and he stood without tension or any indication of nerves. Vivienne figured that he had done this so many times before that maybe it seemed like an outing to the grocery store for him. She really wished that it didn’t feel like someone’s hands slowly tightening around her throat, like it did for her. She wondered if he had ever been this nervous, but by the way he carried himself and his firm solidarity, it made her feel pretty pathetic to imagine that he probably hadn’t. It bothered her and continued to bother her until it all seemed to bubble up inside of her to the point of the eruption of her curiosity.  
“Rollins!” She hissed. “Hey! Rollins.”  
Rollins looked over at her and Vivienne looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her bothering him. Thankfully they hadn’t. Maybe without the attention of their other teammates, he would talk to her. She looked back at him. That face was still so stony.  
“Hey, sorry.” She said, feeling all at once like she had made a mistake. Her mouth continued on, though. “Were you freaked out on your first mission?”  
Rollins looked at her.  
“—Because I keep having this feeling like I’m totally going to drop the ball and ruin everything.”  
“I suggest you don’t tell me that, so I don’t have to kill you to ensure our success.”  
Vivienne was a little taken aback. “Oh my God that’s like the most words you have ever said to me in a row.”  
Rollins raised an eyebrow.  
“And has anyone ever told you that it’s really hard to read your humor?”  
“What if it wasn’t humor…”  
Vivienne gazed at him intently, waiting for the “just kidding”. It got a little long and Vivienne broke the silence with a slow laugh and a slap to the leg. “Oh, you’re good. That’s a good one…Don’t worry, I’m pretty damn sure you won’t need to kill me. I think it’ll all be ok. If I do fuck up, though, please do kill me so Rumlow doesn’t. I feel like with you at least it would be pretty quick.”  
Rollins’ thin lips twisted a little into a barely-recognizable smile.   
The look gave Vivienne a little comfort and it helped ease her nerves for the rest of the flight. She went over everything in her head—everything her S.O. had ever said to her, everything he had showed her, everything they had practiced. When it came down to it, he had told her that it all boiled down to a mindset and that’s what she strived to embody. She went over it again and again in her mind, feeling it, pushing it through her veins, driving it into her senses, birthing it to a definite and steadfast reality. She was a weapon.

 

Vivienne lay stomach down in the dirt, her body still. Sand mixed with the arid atmosphere and snaked over the ground and into her clothing. She felt the heat from the exposed sun pressing down on her shoulders and sinking into her black vest. Sweat started to dampen the kaki shirt she wore underneath it, draining her body of whatever water it attempted to retain.   
She felt grit between her teeth; every time she had thought she had spit it all out, the unpleasant sensation presented itself again in her back molars. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and blinked away a bead of sweat before concentrating again into the lens of her scope.  
“Donahue?”  
“Two on the roof,” she answered. “Six in the courtyard, ten circulating the outer wall.”  
The adobe structure stood in the shadow of a tall rocky cropping. Its sun-soaked exterior blended well with the desert sands and it would be almost impossible to see with the naked eye if they had not known that it was there from the distance they were from it now. It was set up like a compound—two barracks on either side of an enclosed courtyard with the main building straight back, tucked snugly between the back corners. Even though intel had said that it would be lightly guarded during the day, the place was still crawling with mercenaries.   
Vivienne looked over at Agent Rumlow, who lay beside her, his own scope set up in front of him. Sweat glistened over his brow, but he didn’t seem to care. His gaze was locked to the cliff that sheltered the compound in its wake.   
“So far intel is correct,” Vivienne said, adjusting her earpiece so that only he would hear her. “Do you think it would be safe to assume that six are also—“  
“No.” Rumlow interrupted her sharply. “You never assume. You prepare for the worst they can dish. Doesn’t matter if intel comes with a bow on it.”  
He was back to being the authoritarian that had yelled at her throughout her first month at STRIKE, but Vivienne knew better. He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t said those things that he had while they had been alone getting her gear.   
“Now that would be suspicious,” Vivienne said under her breath. “Bows are never a good thing.”  
Rumlow gave her a look, eliciting just the response Vivienne wanted. He sighed. “You know what I meant.”  
Vivienne watched him pull the mic closer to his mouth, feeling that unnamed feeling that she had in the gear room.   
“Alright, STRIKE, listen up,” Rumlow said. “Info holds up for phase one. Coop, you have roof duty. Henley, loop their cams on my go.” He paused and pushed himself up and out of the gritty sand. Vivienne followed suit, packing their scopes into the black duffle bag she had brought. Rumlow looked around, scanning the horizon. Mirages glistened over the expanse, but apart from that nothing moved.   
“Crue and Rollins,” he continued. “We need a clear path. Work your way in, but split and cover your targets. If I hear an alarm or a scream, we’ll sort out your resignation when we get back to the base. You know the drill.” He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and walked down the rocky outcropping they had parked behind to where their tan Humvee waited. “Donahue and I are working our way up the middle, so make sure that you do your job so that out initial path is clear.”  
Rumlow looked back and locked eyes with Vivienne. She nodded at him.  
“Alright, boys—and girl,” Rumlow said, opening the door to the truck. “STRIKE is go, I repeat, STRIKE, we are go.”

The beauty of it was that, as they drove to the site, the dominos had already been set into motion. It was so quiet in the Humvee, save the roar from the engine and tires as they raced across the uneven desert ground and the hammering of Vivienne’s heart that seemed to affect all of her senses. Vivienne listened to the sound of the team’s breathing over her earpiece and the muffled pop of the silenced gunshots in the background. Being blind to what was going on was exhilarating and nerve-racking at the same time. Vivienne readjusted the grip on her gun.  
“Hey.”  
Vivienne looked over to Rumlow, who had covered his mic and was looking at her.   
“You good?”  
Vivienne snorted, giving him a sideways smile. “Tch. Hell, yeah.”  
Cooper’s voice came through their comms. “Cooper reporting. The roof is down. I have visual on the outer wall and courtyard.”  
Vivienne instinctually squinted at the top of the cliff where she knew that he was perched, picking people off from the heavens. Death from above. She allowed herself a small smile.   
“Phase Two—Doorknock—is go.” Cooper said. “I have targets in view. I repeat, Rumlow, you are go. I have your asses covered.”  
They were approaching the compound fast and it reared up out of the shadows of the cliff to greet them. If anything, Cooper’s report caused Rumlow to push further down on the gas pedal and the Humvee’s tires shot rocks up at the side of its belly as they went.  
“Copy that,” said Rumlow, swerving around the outer cropping of rocks that formed a natural line of defense. The gates of the compound loomed before them and Rumlow slammed on the brakes, making the tires skid a little over the restless terrain. He slapped the Humvee into park and whipped out his keys, throwing open the door.   
Vivienne exited the Humvee on the other side, moving to avoid a body that lay sprawled across the ground. She stared at its motionless bulk.  
“How are we doing, Henley?” Rumlow’s voice seemed distant.   
“No detection, Sir.”  
“Well we’re about to change that,” Rumlow muttered. He raised his gun and did another scan of their surroundings. “Crue, Rollins, make sure no one runs home to tell mommy.”  
Blood trickled over the lips and down the chin of the corpse at Vivienne’s feet.  
“Donahue!” Rumlow barked.  
Vivienne snapped away from the body.  
“There are men in that house who don’t give a flying fuck that that’s the first dead body you’ve seen, so rifle up. I need you here right now.”   
Vivienne pushed any feeling she had within her back down her throat, swallowing it before it could claw its way back up. She was a weapon. She feared nothing. “Yes, Sir.” She said, crouching and readying her gun in the crook of her shoulder.   
She followed Rumlow’s lead and they went forward to the giant wooden doors that would open into the courtyard.   
“Henley,” Rumlow said lowly. “Drop their comms on my go. Coop?”  
“I have the closest on your right in my sights. Ready on your go.”  
Rumlow glanced over at Vivienne. “Donahue—Coop has your right—“  
“So I’ll gut the back.” She could feel Rumlow’s eyes on her and she could hear his calmed breaths. It gave her focus.   
“Don’t hesitate,” he said softly.   
Vivienne resisted the urge to look back at him. There was no reason to. She feared nothing.  
“Ready?”  
Everything seemed to go quiet the split second before she heard Rumlow’s intake of breath.   
“NOW!” Rumlow kicked open the doors, swinging around to his left to deftly take out the man nearest to him.  
Vivienne felt like she was in the sim. Armed men whirled at them, caught off guard by their sudden presence. The man nearest to her right was immediately blown down by the sharp punch of a sharpshooter’s bullet.   
“Shit.” Vivienne breathed. She acted in the same second, moving forward in an offensive crouch, taking aim at the man next closest to her who was fumbling for his gun that was slung over his back. She didn’t feel anything as her bullet sank into him, sending him spinning into the dirt. Before he had hit the ground, she had already shot another in the shadowy corner of one of the barracks and turned to the next man. She pulled the trigger, pummeling him back into the wall of the main building with two rounds.   
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and there was a loud bang. Vivienne felt what seemed like a breath of wind rush over her cheek and something brushed over her ear as she reeled to face the last mercenary. She tightened her finger over the trigger, but a silenced gunshot sent the man lurching into the dust before Vivienne could put a bullet into him. She breathed, looking around wildly as she pushed her sweaty hair back from her face. There was a sticky wetness on the side of her head. She touched the spot tenderly, feeling a warm, wet dip at the top of her ear. It wasn’t big, but it started to sting. It had come from a bullet.  
She regained her composure and looked over at Rumlow, who was advancing across the courtyard towards the main structure.   
“I had him,” she muttered.  
“Yeah? Well I got him.”  
Vivienne had forgotten that she had had her earpiece in and she sighed, readjusting her rifle. She moved forward towards the doors with Rumlow.  
“That fraction of a second when you didn’t shoot could have cost you your life.” Said Rumlow.   
Vivienne glanced at him, but he was more concerned about getting through the door safely, as she should have been as well.   
“Yeah, well…” Said Vivienne, mostly to herself and her pulse still pounded in her ears. Rumlow didn’t seem to be listening. He was relaying orders to the rest of the team. “I was about to shoot the guy. I kinda almost died.”  
Rumlow pulled a smoke grenade off of his belt and set it. “Get used to it, kid. STRIKE isn’t a picnic in the park.” He turned a little toward her, indicating the door with his gun. “Everyone in that house is getting paid to kill you. You are getting paid to kill them, so do your job and focus on the task at hand…Unless you want to lay in the dust with these poor bastards.”  
Vivienne was tempted to turn and look back at the damage they had done before they moved on, but she felt like maybe it would commit her somehow to the same fate they had met.  
“Ready?”  
Vivienne felt adrenaline spiderweb through her body. “Ready.”  
“Phase three—raid is go. Advance.”  
Rumlow kicked open the door and it flew back, surrendering to a yawning darkened room. Rumlow tossed in the smoke grenade and it rolled over the dirty tile floor, spewing fumes into the hot dry space. He and Vivienne moved quickly, checking and securing the space as they progressed into it. It was empty. They emerged into clarity again as they moved towards the depths of the building and away from the smoke, but it was eerily silent and devoid of any heartbeats except their own.   
Rumlow used hand signals, not wanting to give themselves away if they found another mercenary. They went up the stairs. There were office spaces on the top floor—neatly untouched and ordered. Rumlow’s eyes flitted over the area, searching for a trace of anything out of the ordinary that might clue them in as to how to proceed next. There was nothing. Vivienne looked around the room, resisting the urge to cough as the dryness invaded her throat. She clicked her tongue to get Rumlow’s attention and then signaled to him that she was going back downstairs. He nodded and she went.  
The space below was as they had left it. Vivienne looked harder at her surroundings this time, looking for any abnormalities. A merciful breeze breathed through the open door and brushed the dirt across the floor.   
Vivienne’s breath caught in her throat. “I got something,” she whispered into her mic. She heard the creaking upstairs as Rumlow moved quickly back down to join her. Dirty boot prints clung to the flood, muddling around the whole room, but concentrating specifically in one space. There was no grout around the square of tiles there and Vivienne could barely make out the glimmer of metal that enclosed them. Rumlow appeared at her side and saw immediately what she was looking at. He looked around the room for anything that might reveal the entrance. Vivienne looked, too. There was a knob for a heating element on the wall, which Vivienne thought was strange considering they were in the desert. She walked over to it and twisted it a little out of curiosity.  
There was a clink and the spot on the floor released and sank a little before sliding to the side and out of sight. Fluorescent light erupted into the room from the entrance they had just made.  
Vivienne looked across at Rumlow. It looked like he didn’t know whether to be impressed or upset that she had acted without his ok. Either way, he blinked it away and approached the opening, his rifle pointed towards the light.   
Vivienne moved behind them and they descended a metal staircase into a vault with metal walls that emanated a refreshingly cool atmosphere. They reached the bottom of the stairs and the end of the tunnel and turned at the corner. An underground storage room lay before them. Crates were piled on top of each other, bearing all sorts of stamps.   
There was a small rustle at the other end of the room and then a hurried jumble of Spanish, which was repeated over and over.  
Vivienne was too far away to make out what was being said, but the voice sounded scared. Vivienne crept forward behind Rumlow, who signaled her to follow him and cover them. Vivienne complied, her rifle ready.   
There was a sudden sporadic scattering of bullets in their general area.   
Rumlow suddenly tensed and hurried his pace around the corner. “Drop it! DROP IT NOW!!!” His gun was up and he was ready to shoot. Vivienne recognized the play and circled around where he and the target were, flanking them on the left.  
The man was yelling in Spanish. “”   
Vivienne hurried and found a gap large enough between two crates. She could see the target, crouched on the floor with a useless outdated radio in one hand and a gun pointed at Rumlow in the other.   
“Put down your gun and you will be brought in—keep it pointed at me and I will shoot you!!” Came Rumlow’s answer.  
The man held his gun up still and the tension was almost visibly thick between him and Agent Rumlow. Vivienne raised her gun and took careful aim.  
“”  
Vivienne closed one eye and breathed out, pulling back the trigger.   
The man cried out when the bullet found its mark, piercing the fleshy part of his palm and making him unintentionally toss his weapon away. Rumlow closed in immediately and pulled the shocked man’s arms behind his back.  
“Stay down! STAY DOWN!” Rumlow yelled at the man. Vivienne came forward from her hiding place and did one last sweep around to make sure the room was secure before she allowed the tension to begin seeping back out of her muscles.   
“Well that was eventful.”  
Rumlow looked up at her. “Good job, Donahue.”  
Vivienne smiled, her heart lifting with the simple praise. “Thanks. I—“ she began, but Rumlow had already turned his attention back to the man on the floor and was touching his earpiece, relaying orders to the men above ground.   
Vivienne rolled her eyes, knowing fully well that she shouldn’t have expected any longevity out of his compliment. She walked around and studied the target’s immense stash of stolen weapons. Most of the crates had the shield emblem stamped on the side—many of them also bore unfamiliar markings. Some she recognized from her classes at the academy. She walked slowly down the aisles, Rumlow’s voice fading into a muffled echo as she moved further back into the sea of boxes.  
She stopped suddenly. A large crate on her left caught her eye with its vibrantly blood-red emblem. She walked up to it, her breath catching in her chest. The ghastly skull leered back at her, tentacles curling into the textbook image. Hydra. Vivienne reached out to touch it, fascinated.   
Hydra was dead. It had been dead since the disappearance of Captain America. She wondered how old the piece was that the crate contained. The wood looked brand new.   
“Agent Donahue.”   
Rumlow’s voice came over her earpiece.   
“Yuh—umm Yes?”  
“Time to pack and go.”  
Vivienne’s lips parted as she pulled her fingers away from the smooth wood, her gaze locked on the fresh red symbol.


	8. Mini Chapter: Launch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first gasping breath of corruption.

“Cheers.”  
Vivienne raised her tumbler to meet the rim of Clint’s beer bottle. She grinned. “Cheers.”  
They tipped their drinks back.  
Charlie’s was slow. It usually was on Tuesday nights, but this particular Tuesday was grey and it looked like it might rain outside. A few regulars meandered around, talking to the bartenders and bringing drinks back into their usual nooks, retreating from the threat of conversation from someone new. The lamplight threw splashes of orange around the room, but apart from those, the lighting was low and it was a relaxed atmosphere.  
Vivienne instinctually grimaced after taking a draw of her Hennessey. “How’s Romanov?”  
Clint’s eyes narrowed and he set his chin up on his fist. “Why are you asking me?”  
“Who else should I ask? I haven’t seen her in a long time and it seems like you guys are pretty close.”  
Clint shrugged. “I guess. But we were just talking about how badass your mission was. Or rather, you were talking at me about how badass your SO is...I don’t see how that’s related…”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Chill, Clint. Don’t be so touchy.”  
“I’m not.”  
“You are, but whatever.” Vivienne watched Clint scratch the back of his neck and decided to change the subject. What came next had been weighing on her mind anyways. “So Hydra.”  
“Hydra. What about Hydra.”  
“Don’t be an ass.” She looked pointedly at Clint. He turned around the rest of the way in his bar stool to give her his full attention. “Better. So yeah, Hydra. Like, how long has Hydra been inactive?”  
“You mean dead?” Clint crossed his arms. “Since Captain America was buried under ice.”  
Vivienne sighed. “Alright, but what if any Hydra survived? Like, weapons or something.”  
Clint shook his head. “Destroyed and confiscated. SHIELD is pretty good. I think if any of them survived, we would have heard about it. Some dumbass Nazi would probably have shot up the block at some point between when Cap disappeared and now.”  
“Hm.”  
“What.”  
“I dunno. That makes sense, but there are a lot of things that don’t.”  
“What’s got you so interested?”  
Vivienne shook her head. “I dunno. It doesn’t matter. Lame conversational topic, I know.”  
Clint winked at her. “Not as lame as hearing about Rumlow this and Rumlow that. Jesus. They are brainwashing you.”  
“Shut up, Clint.”  
Clint raised his hands in mock defense. “Hey. Easy. I’m just telling it like it is.”  
“Buy me another shot, dumbass.”

 

Rumlow stood in the elevator, his arms folded over his chest. He watched the numbers on the elevator screen climb while it ascended to the uppermost floor of the Triskelion.  
He had let the men and Donahue go right after their debriefing, getting them out of the building and off the clock a little earlier than they were used to. The mission had gone smoothly and he figured it was the least he could do to allow them an early night off.  
He had completed and filed Donahue’s assessment on the way back from South America and had enclosed his final statement regarding the New STRIKE agent. He had passed her. He had hoped that she wouldn’t screw up the mission or give him any reason not to accept her onto the team, and she hadn’t let him down.  
He liked her.  
She was perceptive and quick and she learned quickly. She was more eager to be taught than any of the other men had been and though she had an attitude that matched her age, it was cancelled out by her performance. Not that he had that much of a problem with her attitude; It was amusing. And the way her smile always seemed to curl higher in one side than the other and how the piercing desert sun had reflected in her green eyes…  
The elevator dinged and interrupted his memory of some remark she had made at him on the way back to DC. He hadn’t been aware of the smile that crossed his lips as he tried to remember exactly what she had said, but after the abrupt halt, he snapped back to reality and wiped any indication of the it from his face.  
Pierce had messaged him to meet as soon as the team had gotten back and that’s why he found himself on the top floor of the Triskelion. The message had been blunt and didn’t reveal anything about what the meeting might entail. Rumlow thought it was strange that he had been called up. Usually he avoided the Triskelion’s top floors.  
Pierce’s office was lit only by a lamp in the corner of the room. The DC night pressed evenly over the floor to ceiling windowpanes, making it almost impossible to look outside. When Rumlow entered the room and instinctually glanced over at the glass, all that met him was an orange reflection of himself.  
Pierce was typing on his computer when Rumlow walked in, but he looked up and, seeing that he had company, closed out of his documents and waited for Rumlow to approach him. His lips were pressed together in such a way that the blood left them and they turned pale.  
Rumlow approached the desk, hesitating a little when he wasn’t offered a greeting. “Sir,” he greeted with a nod.  
“Go back and shut the damn door.”  
Rumlow eyed him, caught off guard by the demand, but he did as he was told, coming back with a new wariness that distanced him a little further from the desk than he had been the first time.  
Pierce rubbed his chin. His knuckles were white and his cheeks were flushing red. Rumlow waited.  
“Passed.” Pierce scoffed. Droplets of saliva sprayed across Pierce’s mahogany desk. He wiped his mouth with a shake of his head and retrieved a file from the drawer of his desk. He stood and threw the folder down on the desk between them.  
Rumlow was at a loss for words. He didn’t know what Peirce wanted him to say.  
“Your new agent who passed her tactical test.”  
Rumlow felt his chest burn in realization. “I can explain—I swear.”  
“Oh really?” Pierce drew back the waist of his suit to place his hands on his hips. “Because last time we talked about this, I thought we had had an agreement that the STRIKE team wasn’t getting any bigger. But please, if you have different better plans for my team, please enlighten me.”  
Rumlow paused, not sure how to continue after Pierce had sliced at him with his sarcasm. “I just thought—Fury wants a new member on the team. He wants someone of his own. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to maybe appeal to him, Sir? This agent, she’s—“  
“A girl.”  
“Hardly a girl. She’s twenty-two.”  
“Doesn’t matter how fucking old she is,” snapped Pierce. “What matters is that you thought it would all be fine and dandy if you went ahead and slapped a gun into her hands without my say-so. You think I appreciate that?”  
“I didn’t—“  
“YOU DID! You. Did. or else this goddamn folder wouldn’t be sitting on my desk right now and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”  
Rumlow sighed.  
“I thought you would have learned by now,” said Pierce. “Brady? That ring a bell?”  
“You didn’t have a problem with Brady when Fury sent him our way. I just thought—“  
“I didn’t have a problem with Brady until Brady began to dig. And then what did we do with Brady then?”  
“I shot him in the back of the head.”  
“Like I told you to.”  
“Yes.”  
There was a silence. Pierce’s gaze was locked to Rumlow’s. Rumlow didn’t really bother to study the intention in it until the silence became unnecessarily longer.  
Realization hit him all at once. “Sir.” He said hurriedly. “She doesn’t pose a threat. She doesn’t know anything—”  
“And how long will that last?”  
Rumlow clenched his teeth together, thinking of wasted time and that goddamn desert sun. “I don’t know, but I can make it last until there’s a problem. I swear if there’s a problem, I’ll take care of it.”  
Pierce took off his glasses, the tendons in his neck standing out. “Oh, but Agent Rumlow, there is a problem.”  
Rumlow knew there was no victory here. His arms hung heavily at his sides and they pulled his shoulders down with their weight that was recognized so suddenly. He wanted to spare Donahue. He really did.  
Pierce’s eyes were locked to his. “I appreciate that you’re trying to take it upon yourself to carve your own image into the STRIKE team, but the team is mine. I make the critical decisions. You just sit back and hide your strings.”  
Rumlow closed his eyes, willing himself not to allow anything to tumble from his lips that he might regret. “I—“  
“You will take her out on her next mission and you will shoot her in the back of her pretty head, understood?”  
Rumlow looked back up at Pierce, his gaze hard. “Yes, Sir.”


	9. Hellbender Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Russia. The middle of nowhere. Rumlow sets out to fulfill his orders from Pierce, something that's been weighing heavily on him since the day they were given to him. Eager to get the deed out of the way, he sets the scene perfectly--cold wintery night, rural setting, no possible way for Donahue to make an escape...  
> As he is adjusting his rifle to direct the final seconds of Donahue's life, a bullet interrupts him; not his own, but a cold round that lodges itself in his leg and throws off his aim...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The Russian woman and Vivienne are speaking in Russian, but the formatting I used to indicate this fucked up in the transfer of scripts from my word doc. Sorry! (Use yo imagination!!)

“Oh my God!” Vivienne gasped.

She turned up the radio dial that cast cold blue light throughout the depths of the giant SHIELD tactical vehicle and filled the truck with a burst of surprisingly static-free music. She grinned back at its passengers from her seat up front.  
“We get American radio in this thing!” She said, attempting to will the rest of the STRIKE team into better spirits. The ride from the private airport had been long so far and it was unclear how far they were going. There was conversation at first, but even Cooper’s banter had turned into incomprehensible muttering and the car had been quiet before Vivienne had begun blasting Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”. She began to sing along, mustering more cheeriness than the uncomfortable vehicle seemed it would allow.  
She winked back at Rollins. “Sing it with me!”  
Rollins smirked a little. He had become a little less frosty towards Donahue after their mission to South America, but he seemed reluctant to accept much past the occasional smile and a smattering of conversation here and there. Vivienne took it as a step.  
She looked over at Rumlow. “You’re a real tough cookie with a long history of breaking little hearts like the one in me—“  
“No.” Rumlow reached over from behind the wheel and muted the radio. The truck descended back into silence, save the roar of the tires and the occasional pummeling from Russian winter winds that pelted snow across the windshield and past the headlights that cut into the black night.  
“Why not?” Said Vivienne.  
“Because.”  
Vivienne waited for him to go on. He didn’t.  
“Because why?”  
Rumlow sighed. “Because I fucking said so, Donahue. Radio silence.”  
“Not that kind of radio.”  
Rumlow looked over at her. The irritation was clear in his flushed cheeks.  
Vivienne raised her hands in mock defeat. “Hey. Ok, ok. “  
Rumlow had been in an unusual mood ever since they had come back from South America a few weeks ago. He spent most of his time in his office and more often than not, he was ‘too busy’ to lead their daily activities, so the duty fell to Rollins. Vivienne had tried to come check up on him a couple of times, each time with some work-related excuse that might necessitate her talking to him in person, but he had been direct and short-tempered and she didn’t feel like she had deserved that. She had thought that she had done pretty well on her first mission— he had passed her, hadn’t he?  
Whatever had compelled him to act the way he had the past few weeks, she refused to recognize its affect on him. He might have suddenly forgotten the months they had spent training together and getting to know one another, but she hadn’t. She had faith that eventually he would ease back up. All she needed to do was perform and she vowed to herself that she would to the peak of her ability. She couldn’t be a disappointment. 

Vivienne had begun to drift into a hazy sleep, her mouth and nose buried into the thick warm fur around the hood of her parka, but then braking lurched her body forward enough to wake her and she drew a sudden breath, snapping back into alertness. She yawned and looked over her shoulder, meeting Rollins’ gaze. Instead of maintaining eye contact, he looked away quickly. Vivienne wondered what that was all about.  
Rumlow pulled his had over his head and pushed his hands into a pair of gloves. “We’re here.”  
Vivienne had no idea where ‘here’ was. It looked like the middle of nowhere, Russia. The wind had eased up a little, but it was still blistering cold outside. She could tell by the way her breath frosted on contact with the truck window.  
It had been unclear exactly how this mission was going down; something about doing recon on a Russian facility. The details all seemed evasive after the long plane trip and the back-to-back car ride.  
Rumlow opened the door and cold rushed into the belly of the truck, assaulting them all with a wintery blast.  
Vivienne pulled her gloves on and readjusted her hat before she opened her door. She hopped down into a decent amount of snow and followed Rumlow, who had begun to wade out into the precipitation. She had no idea why they were walking into apparent nothingness, but it made her wary and she readied her rifle in case it was needed. Rumlow had stopped a little ways ahead and Vivienne walked up to him. He was programming a location into one of the SHIELD scopes and he handed it to her when she came near.  
“Here.” He said.  
She reached out for it, but he hesitated before letting her take it. In that moment she looked up at him and even in the darkness she could sense that there was something different about him. The feeling radiated off of him and his tensed arm.  
“You ok?” Vivienne asked.  
“Yeah.” Rumlow nodded a few paces in front of him. “Take the scope and tell me what you see at those coordinates.”  
Vivienne felt the urge to press him further, but then she remembered her vow to herself and she sank down into the snow, adjusting the scope and switching it to night vision. She tightened her range, searching.  
Filmy green nothingness filled her lens. “Hey.” She said, adjusting the dial on the side of the piece. “Are you sure—“  
Suddenly, the even, dulled rumble of the wind was overtaken by reverberating mechanical roars and Vivienne registered the sharp ‘crack’s as gunfire lit the night and light flooded the scope, blinding her. She cried out and reared back, but as she did, she heard a grunt from Rumlow, barely audible over the sudden swarm of engines, and she felt her body twist to the side as a slug pounded into her right shoulder.  
She tried to catch herself when she fell, but her right arm buckled when she hit the ground and something hard and unmoving met her ribcage, punching the air out of her body. She gasped, but the last thing she remembered was Rumlow’s yell and the soft whisp of snowflakes across her cheeks.  
Vivienne opened her eyes.  
The world was a snow globe.  
Dawn blushed softly over the sky, breathing pinks and oranges that seemed warm, but the colors did little to melt the snowy landscape. The wind had eased a little; it no longer howled, but it scattered snowflakes over the growing blanket of precipitation Vivienne found over her body.  
Just then, Vivienne was immediately jarred by a flashback from the night before, the blurry memory taking her breath away. She sat up suddenly, disrupting the snow on and around her, and wished she didn’t when a icy, burning pain shot through her shoulder. Vivienne cried out and grasped it, feeling warmth seep into her gloves. She pulled her hand away and looked at the smear of dark red over her palm. She had been shot—a clean round that had gone straight through just below her collarbone.  
Vivienne struggled to her feet, staggering when her head began to spin. It was like a hangover, but different. The blood loss wouldn’t easily be replenished.  
She grabbed her rifle and looked around. There was nothing. Barren Russian wasteland.  
She felt her eyes sting, but she wouldn’t let herself break down that easily. She couldn’t afford the luxury at the moment. 

The road they had been travelling on was a few meters back the way she had come. Snow snakes slithered over the pavement and it looked like it hadn’t been traveled on since. The SHIELD tactical vehicle had simply disappeared and there were indications of divots—maybe a struggle—in the snow, but everything had been windswept since the occurrence and whatever had happened last night was hidden from clarity.  
Vivienne squinted down the road, swallowing back the pain in her shoulder and the new bruise-like pain that had begun to throb in her abdomen. She must have fallen on something.  
How long had they been driving? Hours. She hadn’t been paying attention to what direction they had bee driving, she hadn’t known the destination and its proximity to other landmarks on a map, hell, it had been too dark last night to pick out distinguishing points on the landscape—she was lost.  
Vivienne clenched her teeth together when the realization of the depth of her situation dawned on her.  
She reached for the radio on her hip, but whatever she had fallen on the night before had crushed it and the screen flickered uselessly in her hand. She let out a frustrated groan and threw the device in exasperation. The movement hurt more that whatever little tension it relieved, if it had relieved any at all.  
She thought then about the STRIKE team wondered what the hell had happened. She closed her eyes and conjured the sights and sounds from the night before in her mind. The motors…  
Snow skis?  
Something like snow skis maybe. They had been attacked by people on snow skis. It all seemed so unbelievable and even laughable, but Vivienne was in no mood for humor and it did little to calm her that she had possibly put a finger on a clue. She narrowed down the distance in her head that snow skis could travel and doubled it in her head for a round trip approximation. That would give her the maximum distance they could have originated from. She assumed, with the disappearance of the truck and the lack of bodies, that there may be a possibility that the men were still alive and that wherever their aggressors had originated from, they could travel by the road to get there.

She was in a seriously fucked-up mess.

She was in a mess, but she would do the best with what she had and she would follow the road, regardless of whatever horrific scenarios she generated in her head that the men might be going through right now. She refused to feel the fear of being the only one that might have to face whatever lay ahead.  
She was a weapon.  
Vivienne waded out of the snow on the side of the road and onto the snow-swept pavement. There was a tire divot in the snow bank—possibly and indication of someone turning the truck around—back the way they came…  
She started with that and pulled her hood tightly over her head, swinging her rifle over her uninjured shoulder. She started walking.

Vivienne squinted at the horizon.  
Sure enough, there was a tiny speck on the road before her. She took a last step and shaded her eyes from the blinding white landscape, standing in the middle of the road. The speck was moving.  
Vivienne almost broke down in relief. The past couple of hours had been grueling. She was sweating underneath all of her layers, but the sweat became cold, making her skin clammy. Her lower ribcage felt like she had been punched by someone hulk-sized and her gunshot wound had taken on a dull, throbbing pain. The blood loss had slowed, though, so she had paid it no attention.  
She went to the side of the road and crouched down. There really was no cover, but her white gear would help her blend into the stark scenery just long enough for the car to be close enough…  
Vivienne waited, listening. She readied her rifle, shielding it with her body so that its black form wouldn’t be spotted until she was.  
She heard the engine draw near and she gave herself a mental countdown. When the car was close enough, she whirled around and stood, pointing her rifle at the windshield. It was a tiny foreign hatchback.  
“Stop the car!” She yelled. “I SAID STOP THE CAR!”  
The back of the car pitched forward and the front pulled down with the sudden application of brakes. Vivienne crept forward, her aim trained on the shadowy driver. She winced at the pressure of the rifle against her shoulder and tried to dig back into her Russian classes she had taken at the Academy. She walked around to the drivers’ side.  
“Vyyti iz mashiny!” She snapped.  
The driver was an older woman with creases in the corners of her eyes and wind-beaten cheeks. Her dark eyes were widened with fright and she fumbled, raising her hands upward off of the wheel.  
Vivienne opened the door and the woman complied with the demand, getting out of the drivers’ seat.  
Vivienne drew a breath. She felt a pang of regret for having to frighten the elderly woman, but there weren’t any other options. She reached out and gave the woman a gentle push on the shoulder, nodding to the other side of the car. “Zalezay.”  
The woman did as she was told and went around to the other side of the car, opening the passenger side door and slowly lowering herself in. As soon as she was in, Vivienne sank down into the drivers’ seat with a grunt. The old woman closed her door and Vivienne did the same. She looked over at the woman, attempting an expression of reassurance. It was hard to muster regarding the circumstances.  
The woman continued to watch her, but she said nothing. Vivienne shifted the car into gear and they lurched forward.  
“Where were you going?”  
There was a silence before the woman replied. “To my house.”  
“You will show me the way there. I will not hurt you if you comply.”  
The woman nodded, her eyebrows pushed together in worry.  
They went a ways before turning down a snow-covered graved road. The car was silent.  
“Why are you doing this?” asked the woman.  
Vivienne glanced over at her. “My companions were taken and I have to find them.”  
There was a silence. It was heavy, weighed down with a sudden memory, maybe. Not one of Vivienne’s, though.  
“Turn here.”  
Vivienne did.  
It was a tiny shack of a house with the indication of a barn behind it. Vivienne imagined that maybe once it had been a farmstead. The vast stretch of nothingness around it could really be fields, but the snow hid everything in an ocean of white. Vivienne doubted that the frail woman would have the strength for even one day out in the sun tending to crops and wondered fleetingly how she lived so rurally.

The car bounced along, sliding a little as they made their way along the frostbitten dirt road. As the house came into clarity, Vivienne noted to herself the hanging broken shutters, the sagging roof with shingles like broken teeth, and the siding that had been stripped down to the core of the wood by the harsh Russian elements, never mind whatever idea of paint there had been in the first place.  
She felt her heart give a little, but when she looked over at the woman she saw the memories of a better time reflected in her cloudy eyes as they went over the small brittle frame that made up her home.  
Vivienne couldn’t bring herself to wave around her rifle; not in the face of this kind of poverty. She opened the door of the car and got out, slinging the weapon over her shoulder.


	10. Hellbender Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The STRIKE team has been abducted by mysterious aggressors. Brock's mind has reeled back to his childhood house in his drugged stupor, the surroundings alone and their toxicity making it all the more likely that he could spill SHIELD's secrets... Vivienne learns a little more about the "men in white" and embarks on a risky and threateningly suicidal plan to save the team...

The air was musty and pressing and the room smelled like cigarette smoke and dog piss.  
He hadn’t been there in years and that was because he wouldn’t; he’d never go back. The place had never seen the golden glow childhood brought to families with the birth of their first son—it hadn’t really been a celebration. It had been a shackle.  
The severance of his roots there had been easy; it was quick and it had happened with the last passing glance from the back of a police car.  
The memory of the people there and the atrocities that had occurred in that house would prove harder to shake, though.  
He had always been pretty level-headed, but he felt that going back might change all of that.  
That was why, now, standing in the living room , all of those long deceased memories and fragments of sights and smells and feelings pressing around him in such a suffocating manner—now— he could admit to himself that he was terrified.   
Brock sank to his knees.  
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this was all a trick. He was drugged or something—or lucid dreaming. Either way, he couldn’t be back in Chicago and though the wooden floor felt the same and the room smelled the same, he knew he couldn’t be back in that house.  
“Crippling, isn’t it?”  
Brock slowly looked up to see a shadowy figure before him.  
“This memory haunts you.”  
Brock clenched his teeth. “Get outta my head,” he snarled. When he spoke, though, his words were distorted and delayed and it took a great deal of effort to get them out.  
“Not quite yet. There’s something we need from you.”  
“Get out.”  
The shadow came forward and reached out to him. He watched as a it touched his skin right above his left pectoral muscle and then kept going, piercing his flesh and pushing coldly into his muscle.  
“Augh!” He choked, grimacing to keep the rest of his agony at bay. He breathed hard, managing the pain, attempting to channel it into strength, but his limbs were immobile. As much as he willed them to work, they remained heavy and motionless. He looked defiantly back at his aggressor. He would not be broken so easily.  
The shadow intensified and almost took on a human-like form, but as soon as it was there, it was gone again. “We know who you are. We know everything.”  
“No you don’t. Or else you wouldn’t be doing this. I would be dead.”  
“Who says you aren’t?”  
Brock drew a breath, wincing at the cold pain that pushed further into his chest. “Nnnnhh…I do. I know.”  
The shadowy presence twisted its weapon. Brock shouted out in pain.  
“Then you know that we have your body and you can do nothing about what we do to you. Only you can stop this session.”  
Brock gasped breaths. “Who do you think you are? What do you want?”  
“Your people and my people have had a long history together. We go waaay back. And as for your other question…You know what we want.” The shadow backed away, withdrawing its ghostly weapon.  
Brock was aware of the hot blood that ran from his wound down and over his chest and stomach. He clenched his teeth and willed his raw nerve endings into numbness.  
“We want…Insight.”  
Brock looked up at the form suddenly, snorting. “I thought you said you know me…”  
“We know everything.”  
Brock steeled himself. “Then you know that I’ll keep some secrets even when I’m burning alive in hell.” He spat where the shadow’s feet would be and readied himself for a lengthy interrogation.  
He wasn’t kept waiting for the response he expected.

 

Vivienne’s pained moan was muffled by the cloth between her teeth. She breathed hard through her nose, screwing the cap back onto the vodka bottle, and leaned closer to the grimy mirror to see the bullet’s exit wound better. She took the cloth from her mouth and pressed it to the fresh blood that bubbled from the gap in her shoulder.   
She grabbed the electrical tape the woman had found for her and wrapped it around her torso and then over her shoulder and under her arm, securing her makeshift bandage in place.  
She caught sight of her reflection. She looked tired and lost.  
“My boy was taken.”  
Vivienne startled and looked around to where the woman stood in the hall watching her. “What?”  
The woman’s eyes held the feeling that she had seen in her own just seconds ago, but they had added pain that was raw and showed through the tears that had started collecting in the creased corners. “And my husband. They were taken.” She looked at Vivienne as though she were expecting an explanation, but Vivienne didn’t know what to say.  
“My boy was no older then you. We were—” she stopped, suddenly becoming alive with the discovery of her voice. “We were happy here.”  
Vivienne watched a tear fall from the old woman’s eyes.  
“My husband had a farm and my son—my boy—he was such a good boy, and that’s why they took him. They carved into him—and—and—.“ The woman was gasping now between sobs. “They hung his body in one town and my husband’s body was h-hung in another.”  
Vivienne stared at the woman, shocked. She didn’t anticipate this. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if the woman was mad at her or if she thought she was going to help her. Why else would she have shared her story?  
She looked down at the woman’s feet. The veins stuck out, blue against the white of her skin, and three of her last toes were dark with untreated frostbite. The sight enhanced everything. The woman’s story played over in her head, gaining lucidity with every little detail Vivienne took in from the frail elderly body.

"Who took them?"

"They are the men in white..." The woman shook her head. “a growing terrorist disease.”

They looked at each other in silence for a minute. Vivienne was torn.

“I am only one person,” Began Vivienne. “I may not even be enough to save my companions. But I swear that one day I’ll come back and kill the men who did this. I’ll kill them all.” 

 

Vivienne pressed her gloved hand over her bandana, forcing it closer to the skin on her cheeks in an attempt to intensify the small amount of warmth it gave her. The cloth had been a parting gift from the woman—awkwardly given and more awkwardly received.   
That morning she and the woman had set out in the woman’s little car and had driven the distance to the hazy white mountains that had just barely been in view from the elderly Russian’s kitchen window. She had said that that was where the men in white were from. The little village closest knew all about where the terrorists were located, but the “men in white” overpowered whatever mumblings of law enforcement had presented themselves and the villagers were terrified of them and so no authority threatened the terrorists’ presence.   
They were tucked in the snowy mountains somewhere amongst the jagged black rocky outcroppings. No one had dared to even look beyond the barbed wire gate that blocked the entrance from the road, and so their exact location remained unknown, but Vivienne was sure that she could find their compound—there was logical sense to the location of everything.  
Vivienne had readied the small amount of weapons that she had on her as they had driven to the gate—her rifle, a SHIELD issued handgun, and a couple of tactical blades—but she knew she wouldn’t stand a chance with the sparse amount of equipment she had if she were to really get herself into any trouble. She only had so many rounds…  
It was all stupid. It really was. But it was what it had come down to.   
Had she had her radio, she would have made a different call. Had she had any sort of communication at all with SHIELD, things would be different, but it was just her. Only she knew what had happened and every minute she wasted was another minute she was separated from the team and God only knew what they were going through.  
The old woman pulled the car to the side of the road before it veered off to the left and up into the wooded mountainside. She had said that the gate was a little further up along the road, but she would go no further for fear of endangering both of their lives in case it was guarded.   
Vivienne had gotten out of the car and had begun adjusting all of her gear for the inevitable hike. While she did that, the woman came around to her side of the car and had watched her, her arms folded and her eyes dark, worried.   
Vivienne gave her a half smile of reassurance, but the woman had interrupted the gesture when she pulled a bandana from her pocket and held it out to Vivienne, not meeting her gaze.   
“My son’s.” She had said, giving it a little shake as an indication for Vivienne to take it.  
Vivienne did, feeling it softness in its worn threads. It was blue with a threaded black design on it.   
“May you find your friends and find yourself on this side of the gate again with your life.”   
Vivienne tucked the bandana slowly around the inside of the neck of her parka. “Thank you. Spasibo.”  
The woman nodded, stood a little longer as if she might say something else, and then decided against anything further. She walked back to the driver’s side door and got in.   
Vivienne shrugged her shoulders, wincing at the pain that punched her under her right clavicle when she did so. She was too preoccupied with her plan or lack thereof to give her wound much attention and it caught her off guard when it reminded her of its presence.   
She turned back and met the eyes of the woman through the glass of the car window. “Thank you for everything,” she said, knowing the woman couldn’t hear her. She had turned and started her trek after that into the trees.   
Now she pressed the bandana to her cheeks, thanking the old woman mentally for the simple addition and whatever small amount of warmth it added.   
She had been hiking for a good hour after she had cut through the simple chain-link fence. Apparently whoever these people were, they were content with the notion that no one in their right mind would venture into their domain. It worked into Vivienne’s favor. The climb, however, was less forgiving. The wind threatened to dislodge whatever footing could be found and it whistled and wailed with ghastly echoes through the trees with such a shrill biting quality that it chilled Vivienne’s spine and caused her to stop more than once and crouch down, scanning the mountainside for anyone—anything—that might threaten her passage. She was sure she had seen bear tracks, but that was the least of her worries.  
Vivienne dug into her pocket, pulling out her compass to determine her location in correspondence with the road that twisted its way up the mountain. Deciding that it was probably ok to start cutting inward towards it, she did so, taking a minute to catch her breath, but not too long because the cold thin atmosphere was much more penetrating when she was standing still. 

 

The room flickered a little. Brock let his muscles go limp again, letting the pain wash through him. It was something he had been taught in his training, making the act of stomaching torture almost as tolerable as standing fully in a shower that was several degrees too hot. Almost as tolerable.   
Brock ‘s head lolled to the side and his shoulders slumped. He felt blood trickle from the inside of his cheek into the saliva that dripped off of his lip.   
He watched the wall of the room across from him. It blurred every time a pulse of throbbing pain was sent through his body, the only thing that was keeping him from slipping into unconsciousness from the blood loss. The pain signals were interrupting the drug’s affects on his mind. Not all of them, just the ones that threatened his consciousness.   
He was barely aware of the fingers in his hair when his aggressor yanked his head back to expose his throat. Brock coughed on the blood that rushed towards the back of his esophagus.  
“I will keep cutting into you until you spill your guts…maybe literally if I’m lucky.”  
Brock snorted, but he didn’t have energy to fuel another retort.   
The blade was at his throat.   
“Shall I start here?”  
Brock chuckled, but it was more of a gargle. “I wouldn’t…You know the saying…”  
“Hmm…” The shadowy figure released his grasp on Brock’s head.  
Brock stared up at the ceiling. Such a joke.  
“Well maybe I should start with the other heads first…”  
Brock was fixated on the image of peeling paint above him. “They don’t know anything.”  
“We’ll see. We’ve already… medicated… the rest of them as we’ve done to you. Maybe one of them wants refuge from a personal memory. So much to work with amongst you…So many skeletons. The tragedies are riveting.”  
Brock stared hard at the ceiling.   
“Maybe you will have a change of heart after I bring the first couple of your men’s heads back to show you…”   
There was a silence. Brock didn’t answer.  
The shadow walked around in front of him. “Very well.” He said. He brought the blade down hard into Brock’s thigh.   
Brock yelled out, but the breath died in his throat as the room started swimming and fading.  
“I’ll let you think about it,” muttered the shadowy figure, flitting in and out of Brock’s perception.


	11. Hellbender Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rescue is underway!! Vivienne is cold, but determined. Rollins is grumpy AF. Brock is drugged AF. Enjoy!

Vivienne’s fingers felt like they were going to fall off—she dared not take off her gloves to look at them for fear of seeing the telltale signs of frostbite setting in. Her cheeks felt raw after battling the elements and her lips were numb and splitting, but all of the sudden none of that mattered. A stone wall had never looked so beautiful—or foreboding.   
The giant windowless grey structure beyond it sat coldly tucked into the black rock of the mountainside. Snow had started to fall again, but this time it was soft, due in part to the jagged rocks that protected the cavity from the majority of the harsher weather.  
She needed a plan. She had no plan.   
She felt her stomach turn with the thought of winging it. How the hell was she supposed to know where to go without intel? How many people were in the structure and where were they stationed? The list of everything that could possibly go wrong only had room to grow.   
So she watched and waited; she was an impatient person, so it was extremely hard for her not to jump out from behind the bushes with guns blazing to cut short the lengthy observation period she forced herself through for the sake of the STRIKE team. She knew in the back of her mind that every extra detail she could take in about the place, the routine, the indications of further features that might cause immediate collapse in any sudden plan—all of it. It all increased the very slim likelihood that she might be able to possibly get any survivors out safely.  
Without the team, she really was nothing. She couldn’t leave them to save herself.

Vivienne crept through the underbrush toward the back of the building. There was an entrance there with a two-guard unit that circulated the area every seven minutes. It looked like a loading port. Giant crates sat outside two massive iron doors and boxes were stacked up on top of each other beside a smaller door just beside the two big ones. There were cameras pointing toward the doors, but, unless someone decided to move their placement, the boxes created several blind spots that might work to Vivienne’s advantage. The small door was her best shot. The larger crates completely obscured the vision of one of the cameras and the boxes to the right of the door created just enough wiggle room from the other one that it might be possible to slip by.  
Vivienne waited for the guards to come around the corner. They came just in time, working their way around the perimeter and then back the way they came.   
Vivienne’s heart began to race and she swallowed before the nausea of even attempting this stupid and more than likely futile rescue mission could override the protective wall she had set up in her head against rational thought at the moment.   
She leapt out from the underbrush and took care to stick to areas where the snow had already been disturbed. Even if she created footprints, they would soon be filled by the snow that had increased in output since she had arrived. She darted towards the structure, keeping against the wall when she reached it in order to keep her tracks secret a little longer.  
She pressed herself against the side of one of the giant crates, breathing as evenly as she could as she compared her exact location now to where she had determined she needed to be in order to escape the view of the cameras. She readjusted quickly, tucking her left hand closer to her side. She edged toward the door, glancing behind her to make sure the guards weren’t early. So far, they remained on their timely patrol as far as she could tell.   
She caught her glove between her teeth and pulled it off, rifling through her pocket for her Swiss army knife. She pulled it out, approaching the door. She could hear the guards talking in Russian around the corner of the building. They were drawing near.  
She pushed the tiny head of her picking tool into the lock and jiggled it, sensitive to the feel of the inside of the lock through her tool.   
The men were coming closer.   
Vivienne wiggled the knob of the door—it would open. She just had to hit the right spot…  
The lock gave away and Vivienne glanced wildly behind her before slipping into the darkness of the room beyond. She closed the door silently, praying that the guards hadn’t noticed anything. She waited in the cold dark, listening.   
The voices of the guards drew closer. As they grew near, Vivienne picked up on the flatness of their tones, giving away no indication of urgency. They peaked and then quieted from there, muffling more as they turned and walked away.   
Vivienne breathed a sigh of relief. The loudest thing now was the sound of her heart beating.   
She fumbled with her tool, finding and turning on her flashlight. The room was filled to the brim with dusty crates. Many of them looked like they had been there for decades, judging by the thickness of the dust they were shrouded in. She didn’t stop and take the time to study them further, though—it was of the utmost importance that she press on and it seemed that in this line of work, curiosity held a massive death toll over the heads of the few wiser cats that remained.  
Vivienne ventured toward the back of the room where a small amount of sickly yellow light was coming through a door with a glass window. Vivienne approached it cautiously, peering through the pane. There was an empty, dimly-lit hall beyond it and several doors against the opposite wall. She waited as she had done before making her dash inside the building. She needed to scope out her surroundings and its patterns. She waited silently in the dark for a little longer, allowing what she hoped was enough time to determine exactly what would be the best time for her to press on.   
Vivienne forced herself to accept that it was probable that maybe no one was coming. She had no way to tell if the part of the building was even used or not. The thought of just walking out the door caused her to hesitate, though, and she slid her handgun out of her thigh holster, flicking the safety off to give her a material means of comfort. The silencer on the end was bulky and cumbersome, but it was necessary if she intended to somehow escape with her life.   
She tried the doorknob, her heart hammering. It as unlocked. She opened the door slowly and then stepped into the naked openness of the hall. She froze, listening. There was no sound. She cautiously started forward again, her gun trained for any unwarranted movement.   
She went across the hall to the first door on the left. That door, too, was unlocked. She opened it and the door swung back into the black abyss of a large empty room. Cold air crept over her skin, sending goosebumps along her arms even under the thick layer of her coat. The room smelled musty. It obviously wasn’t being used. Vivienne took a step into the room to retrieve the door.  
All of the sudden there was a muffled shout.   
Vivienne crouched and raised her gun, willing her eyes to adjust to the black room. She held her breath, listening.   
She heard a male voice, muffled. She guessed that it was coming from the room next to hers. It was incomprehensible, but Vivienne could read the tone. It was sharp and the volume and consistency suggested that the speaker was trying to pry responses from whoever the conversation was being directed towards. An interrogation. The thought immediately sent a surge or rejuvenating energy through Vivienne. The men could still be alive.  
Vivienne listened as the voice stopped. There was a silence before she heard the knob being turned to the door next to hers. She quickly submerged herself in the darkness of the room and pushed the door most of the way shut, pressing herself against the wall and staring through the minuscule crack between the door and the frame. She held her gun ready.   
Three men emerged from the room next to hers They were speaking in fast hushed Russian and Vivienne struggled to hear them and work over the conjugations and unfamiliar nouns and verbs in her head. Something about the man in the next room and a serpent…?  
She couldn’t see their faces as they turned and started to walk down the hall away from her. All of the sudden the one in the middle stopped, abruptly interrupting his own dialogue. Vivienne eased the door shut a little more, praying that they would keep walking.   
The man turned and through the needle-thin crack between the door and the frame, Vivienne saw him staring directly at the door she hid behind. She felt her stomach twist with dread as she saw him approach and she stepped backward into the darkness, surrendering her view of the three men. She lifted her weapon soundlessly and trained it on the entrance.   
The door opened, throwing light across a blocky section of the floor.   
The man who had opened the door stood in the doorway. The light from the hallway was behind him and so his face was shrouded in shadow. As far as Vivienne could tell, she hadn’t been spotted. She remembered how long it had taken for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and she hoped that it would be just as hard for him to gain better sight. He slowly reached out an arm toward the wall. Vivienne held her breath and steadied her gun.   
He flicked the light switch. The lights failed to come on.  
He stood a little longer in the doorframe.   
“Shitty place,” he muttered in Russian. “I’ll be glad when we are done with this secondhand dump.”

He turned around and rejoined the two other men and they disappeared from sight. Vivienne breathed normally again as soon as their footsteps and voices faded with distance.   
She hurried into the hall, quickly scanning her surroundings before trying the doorknob to the door the men had emerged from. It was locked. She found her tool in her pocket again and worked fast to allow herself access. She jiggled the knob, listening, and then jiggled it again. The second time the door opened.   
Vivienne knew in that split second that whatever lay beyond she might not be ready for. She felt something tug at the inside of her heart. Hell, she didn’t know the men that well, but she didn’t think she could stomach the sight of any of them tangled in all of the horrific scenarios she had imagined while she had been climbing in the snow. She took a breath and then pushed open the door, stepping inside.   
The men were all there.   
Vivienne began to freeze with the sight of them and the shock of actually being reunited with the whole team, but their overall welfare overrode her hesitation and she closed the door behind her.   
They were all in one piece, thank God. They sat in a line under greenish fluorescent lights, bound to the chairs they sat atop. They were all slumped over, but the lack of deathly pallor to their cheeks gave Vivienne hope that they were still alive. She ran forward to Rumlow, who sat the furthest to the left. His head hung over his chest and wet blood glimmered in the material of his shirt from a wound a little above his left pectoral. He bled also from his leg. A clean gunshot wound had pierced the muscle and beside it was the clean-cut sliver of a knife wound. Neither leaked arterial blood, so he wasn’t in immediate danger, but it would definitely be in his best interest to get immediate medical attention.   
She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Agent Rumlow!” She whispered urgently. “Sir!”  
There was no response.   
She shook his shoulder. “Agent Rumlow!”  
“Donahue?”  
Vivienne looked wildly over to where she had heard her name.   
“Rollins!”  
The agent looked at her out of the corner of one eye. The other was swollen shut above a cheek that flushed bruised hues. “Wh…” He squeezed the one eye shut and clenched his jaw. When he opened it again there was a pause before he even turned and looked at her. “You’re real?”  
Vivienne went over to him, flipping her knife open. “Yeah. Yeah I’m real and I’m here to get you out. Thank God you’re alive.”  
Rollins watched her warily as she started to cut away at the rope that bound his arms to the arms of the chair. “How the hell…? Why would you…You know what happened…”  
Vivienne looked up at him. “Yeah. They shot me first and I guess they thought they killed me because they left me there. I dunno but I’m really glad to find you guys alive.”  
Rollins looked at her.  
“What.”  
He shook his head and looked down the row of chairs over the men.   
“What happened to you guys.”  
“They drugged us.”  
“Jesus.”  
Rollins got up after Vivienne finished releasing him. His stance was somewhat wobbly, but Vivienne didn’t want to irritate him by asking if he was really ok enough to be walking. Rollins went over to Crue and shook his shoulders. Vivienne started undoing Cooper’s ropes.   
Crue startled into alertness, all of his muscles tensed. Rollins held his fighting energy back. “Easy.”  
Vivienne shook Cooper’s shoulders after she undid his restraints, but his head lolled to the side and he didn’t wake up.   
“Rollins…”  
Rollins looked over. “They drugged him pretty good. He put up a helluva fight. The drugs will last longer with him and Henley since they’re a little lighter. We’ll see about Brock. They drugged him after me so I don’t know what kind of dosage he had.”  
Vivienne looked back at Cooper’s peaceful face. “Well what can we do?”  
Rollins looked over at Crue, who was testing his reality with accusatory looks he shot about his surroundings. He nodded toward Cooper and Crue came forward, respecting the unspoken command. He hoisted Cooper’s dead weight up and over his shoulders.   
Vivienne undid Henley and Rollins easily lifted him onto his shoulders.   
She went back over to Rumlow, hoping that the small amount of time she had spent freeing the men had given him a little more of a chance to shake the drugs’ effects. She undid his restraints, cutting through the old ropes hurriedly, then came back to face him and hopefully wake him.  
She shook his shoulders again. “Rumlow!”  
He was noticeably breathing, the rhythm of the rise and fall of his chest a little more natural than it had been before. She shook his shoulders again. “Come on! Rumlow!”  
Nothing.  
Vivienne looked back at Rollins. He grunted, shifting Henley so that he would stay in place. He was obviously ready to go and Vivienne could see the familiar irritation in his grimace. “What.” He barked. “Come on, Vivienne. You’re barely trying. You can’t carry him.”  
“I am trying, actually,” she said, worry quickly twisting into irritation. “And I know that.”  
She turned back to Rumlow and tapped his cheek. “Rumlow! Wake up!”  
Nothing.   
“Rumlow!”  
“Vivienne. Hurry. This isn’t a picnic on the beach right now.”  
“I. KNOW.”  
She shook Rumlow’s shoulders more violently. His body was limp. “BROCK. RUMLOW. Get. UP!”  
Vivienne cast a look over his chest and the blood and his legs and the blood there, too. She didn’t want to hurt him more than what he had already endured.   
“Vivienne. Now.”  
Vivienne snapped. She threw a poisonous look over her shoulder. “Shut UP, Rollins!” She whirled back to Rumlow, throwing the flat of her hand hard and fast against his cheek with a smack that immediately stung her palm. “GET UP!”  
Rumlow reared back into consciousness, his muscles spasming back into effectiveness. He caught Vivienne’s wrist and looked around to face her from where her slap had skewed his sightline.   
“Get—“ He rasped before the recognition hit him all at once. “Donahue?”  
“Br—Sir. Sorry.”   
“Sorry?” He spoke like one still hazy from a deep sleep. Even in his lethargy, his hazel irises were magnetic and Vivienne was all at once overcome with their complexity of feeling they had within them. She was rooted to the spot and so was he, still gripping her wrist with an almost uncomfortable tightness.   
“Sir.”  
Rollins’ voice snapped Vivienne back to reality and she felt like a dog that had been yanked back on a leash. Rumlow let go of her wrist and Vivienne stepped back to let him have the space to stand up.   
Rumlow leaned heavily on the arm of the chair as he tried to get to his feet.  
“We need to go.” Continued Rollins. “Surely someone’s noticed something by now and if they haven’t, they will soon.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Thanks for the enormous amount of faith you’ve put in my abilities, Rollins.” She turned back to Rumlow. Obviously the guy was doing his best in trying to get up and going, but his best would get them killed. New blood soaked into the drying pools on his shirt and on his leg with the sudden movement.  
He clenched his teeth, muttering under his breath. “Jesus fucking—“   
Vivienne reached out an arm to help him, but he swatted her hand away.   
“Stop. Just let me.” He looked up at her and she got the feeling that he saw immediately what she was thinking. It was written all over way he looked down in thought and the way he all of the sudden froze.   
“Sir?” Rollins was getting impatient.  
Rumlow was still contemplating something. “You… need to go now.”  
Rollins shifted Henley on his shoulders again as if waiting for a better answer.   
Rumlow looked at Vivienne and then at Rollins, nodding mostly to himself. “Jack. Now.”  
Rollins looked like he might argue, but the gravity of the situation overrode the words that had started to form on his lips and his gaze lost some of the hardness that his eyes usually harbored. After a minute of mute acceptance, he inclined his head obediently. He took a few steps toward the exit, but he hesitated again before turning to leave. “Drinks on me when we get back…”  
Vivienne’s heart lurched when she realized what was happening.  
“I’ll hold you to it, Jack, but don’t wait up if I’m late.”  
Rollins looked back at Vivienne expectantly. “Donahue, time to go. Move it.”  
Vivienne opened her mouth. “I—I—“ She looked back at Rumlow, who was watching her. His grip on the present reality and his seemingly nonchalant decision to stay seemed so out of place and wrong. “I…”  
“Donahue. Jesus Christ,” Rumlow’s tone hung awkwardly between irritation and humor, the last bit coming out with a bit of a chuckle on the tail end. “Listen to Rollins. He’s gonna get you outta here and you’re gonna get the chance to live, kid.”  
Vivienne shook her head in disbelief. “How can you be so—so—….look, I didn’t climb all the way up this fucking mountain for you to bitch out and give up like this.”  
“I’d get you all killed. That’s a guarantee,” Rumlow said. “And so will you if you keep it up.”  
Vivienne looked over her shoulder. “Rollins…”  
It was then that she thought of everything. How inconvenient. The whole year tore through her unexpectedly and she wondered in the back of her mind what it meant; why was she thinking of it now? The clarity of the smell of the DC smog, the stupid cabinet doors she and Clint had been working on and had never finished. Clint and Charlie’s and that early hungover morning and punching Henley and the way that Rumlow had looked at her in that dry Brazil desert. Her mind called up the feeling that had driven her mad with its namelessness while she lay in the sand looking back at him that day and all of the sudden, as she stood in the frigid darkness of some dungeon in Russia, it clicked. And she recognized the name with the spontaneity of a person finally blurting something that had been on the tip of their tongue. The realization left her breathless.  
She turned slowly back to Rumlow.  
“Rollins you go,” she said.   
“Donahue.” Rumlow’s tone was a warning.  
“Can you shut up, please, Sir? I think you owe me the option to make my own decision on this. Rollins. Go. I’m getting Rumlow outta here, or else he’s not making it back.”  
“Do what you want, Donahue.” Rollins grunted. He looked over at Crue. “Let’s go.”  
Vivienne took in all of Rumlow’s injuries—everything that bled from his toes to his neck—she met his gaze after assessing how they might pull this off. He was still looking at her with his eyes narrowed, unable to understand why she was staying behind with him.  
“What.”  
“What are you trying to prove, Donahue? You can’t be a hero in this situation. We’re gonna die.”  
Vivienne took off the cloth the woman had given her and she undid her belt, sliding it out of her belt loops. She squatted in front of Rumlow.  
“Donahue,” Rumlow prompted.  
“I think I asked you nicely to shut up. Now don’t yell—please, sir.” She looked hard at his leg and the blood that soaked his clothes. There were two wounds. One stab wound, fresh, and a gunshot wound, a little older. The gunshot wound was crusted over with old blood—that would just have to hold. The stab wound was newer and it would cause the most problems. Vivienne pressed the bandana hard over the incision.   
She felt Rumlow’s hand come down on her shoulder as he took the weight off of that leg. “AHhhgg. Jesus Christ!” His fingers dug into her to compensate for the sudden pain. Vivienne grabbed his opposite hand and pushed it against the bandana, holding the rag in place.  
Rumlow exhaled heavily. “Son of a cock sucking…”   
Vivienne tightened the belt around his leg suddenly, securing the makeshift bandage in place while his muscle was relaxed.  
“Bitch…” Finished Rumlow with a grunt behind clenched teeth.  
“Sssshhh!!!” Vivienne put a finger to her lips, looking up in alarm at Rumlow.  
Rumlow cut off his swearing, his muscles tensed. He heard it, too.   
An alarm had been triggered from the other half of the building. It only took a few seconds for the alarm in their section to scream to life.   
Vivienne stood up. “We gotta go.”  
“Not yet.”  
Vivienne looked at Rumlow. “What? C’mon! Revenge later, hobble away now.”   
“No.” Rumlow looked at her and all of the sudden, in that look, he reclaimed every element of authority that he had held when they first met. “You made the stupid decision to stay behind with me. This is what I’m doing. It’s what I’ve gotta do. You can run away now—maybe you’ll make it, probably you’ll get shot and die face down in the snow— or you can do this with me and we’ll take these motherfuckers down and throw a bigger punch.”  
Vivienne didn’t think she had much of a choice. Rumlow was looking at her expectantly, straightening on his own a little more with the answer he saw in the way she took a breath. Vivienne breathed out coolly. “What are we doing?”  
Rumlow’s mouth curled into a smirk, which held more malice than sincerity. “These sons of bitches took something that doesn’t belong to them. They messed with the wrong guys and I’m gonna blow up the mountainside.”  
Vivienne looked at him. “How.”  
Rumlow took a step. His knee started to buckle. Vivienne came forward and caught his shoulder, supporting it over her own. He gave her a look, but he didn’t push her away this time. Whatever they had drugged him with was definitely still lingering in his system.   
“I know this place,” said Rumlow, taking another step with almost more determination than his body could keep up with. “I’ve been here before. I know a few things about these walls that they could never guess. “  
Vivienne supported him. He was heavy even though he was trying very hard to retain control over his own body.   
“Give me your gun.” Rumlow held out his hand expectantly.   
“Well what am I going to defend myself with?”  
“You’re gonna have to trust me this one time. You can’t help me there and protect us both.”  
Vivienne handed him her gun, deciding to ignore all of the questions she had at the moment. They would be better off asked later, when they were safe. It felt better to pretend that they might make it back rather than face the reality that they were most likely going to die. “Don’t get shot.”  
Rumlow looked down at her, his eyes narrowing. He hesitated and his eyebrows drew together. Vivienne wondered if he might be remembering that day, too. Finally, he smiled a little, flipping the safety off on the gun.   
“Nah,” he said, his voice a little distant with the recurring memory. “It won’t happen.”


	12. Hellbender Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much the continuation of Chapter 11 you've all been waiting for... Enjoy!

Clint Barton grabbed the perspiring big gulp soda he had bought at the gas station on the way to work off of his desk. The plastic cup had left a watery ring in the top page of one of his reports.   
“Awww….soda. C’mon.”  
He snatched the page up from the desk and wriggled it, even though he knew the uncommitted attempt wouldn’t help it dry any faster. He sighed and sat back in his chair, holding the paper out at arm’s length as if his distance from it might benefit the report’s longevity. With his free hand, he texted Natasha. Apparently she was having a late lunch with Tony Stark. She had left the details of what their outing might entail vague and it was killing Clint to think about her all alone with the charming billionaire. She hadn’t answered any of the four texts he had sent yet.  
“Agent Barton.” The woman’s computerized voice jarred him from his deep thought about how to cleverly word his text.  
“Yeah what.”  
He waited and then sighed, tossing his phone onto his desk and leaning forward to reach the intercom button. “What.”  
“You are to report to room one-seventeen to receive a mission briefing.”  
Clint pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now?”  
“Now.”  
Clint groaned and stretched before getting up. He had been sitting behind his desk all day and though he had been looking for an opportunity to do something a little more active, it seemed like a lot to ask to summon him to be briefed this late in the evening. He had just finished his mission report and had been planning on an evening sitting beside Lucky on the couch rewatching the Walking Dead. Whatever. It never worked out that way.

 

His team was already sitting in the briefing room when he got there. Fury looked up from the head of the room when Clint closed the door behind him.  
“Agent Barton.” Fury nodded in greeting. The guy was stony and Clint had never really seen him any other way. He had heard the director had a bit of an Atlas complex and that was why he always looked like somebody pooped on his front porch, so of course Clint avoided him. But now, having been called to meet so late in the evening, a run in with Fury couldn’t be bypassed and he took a seat, signing himself off to whatever fate awaited him.  
“As we speak now, we’re wasting time,” said Fury, getting right to the point with a frown. “We just received an encrypted message from one of our teams—they had been carrying out a mission in Russia, but now they are requesting backup and immediate evac. due to an unforeseen turn of events. Team Charlie, I need you to go out and bring our agents home. They are still in hostile territory, but they are running on limited ability due to the incapacitation of several of their members.”  
Clint sat up a little, interested now that he knew why he was needed. “Which team are we picking up?”  
Fury looked over at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “STRIKE team Delta.”  
Clint felt his stomach turn. A thousand thoughts raced through his head, bumping into eachother and causing his temples to pound. “How many are there? Are they all alive?”  
One of the other agents snorted. “Tch. The STRIKE team? Those pompous assholes? Why can’t they help themselves? I thought that’s what they were trained to do.”  
“Enough, Agent Cavanaugh.” Fury snapped. “Their situation doesn’t allow them enough resources to get themselves home and that is why you will be helping them. As for your question, Barton, four out of the six have been accounted for. So far all of the four are alive but that may change between the lapse of time between now and when you recover them.”  
The room was silent. Clint felt sick.  
“Time is of the essence.” Said Fury. “You leave in thirty minutes. You will be briefed again with details before you land in Russia.”

 

Vivienne gritted her teeth as freezing water pressed against the outside of her boots. She took another step, her foot dropping through the sheet of ice again to become immersed in the smelly water that covered the bottom of the giant duct they were clambering through.   
Rumlow had been quiet beside her most of the way, doing his best to carry his own weight. They hadn’t run into any of their attackers yet, which was fortunate, considering they were a big target and they only had one gun between them. Rumlow had navigated their course through halls and backrooms that Vivienne would have never spotted alone and so far it had paid off. Vivienne could never guess how Rumlow knew every nook of their prison, but she was grateful for it and in the form of payment, she held off on all of the questions she wanted to ask. They had only been gone from the room she had found the men in for a few minutes, but they had managed to make remarkable progress in that amount of time—much more than Vivienne thought they would.   
Now they were wading through a huge metal tunnel together; according to Rumlow, their destination lay at the end of it. Vivienne had never felt such erratic adrenaline spikes—it only occurred to her in fragments the enormity of what they were about to do. They could die. Hell, they probably would die. She didn’t know how she should feel about that.  
“Alright. What, Donahue.”   
Vivienne jumped, caught off guard by Rumlow’s sudden inquiry. She went back through the last minute in her mind, trying to think of anything she did wrong.  
“I don’t know…?” She said slowly. “Am I supposed to know?”  
“Your muscles keep tensing and you breathe faster when you tense them.”  
Vivienne squinted. “What? No. I—I’m not doing that.”  
“I’m leaning on you. I think I would probably notice.” Rumlow shifted his weight a little, easing off of her once he had called a little more attention to the fact. “What’s on your mind?”  
Vivienne slipped a little, but Rumlow steadied her. “Easy.”  
“I don’t know,” said Vivienne, stepping through another layer of ice. “There’s just a lot to think about.” She concentrated hard on the murky water beneath the ice, not wanting to slip again. It gave her an excuse not to look up at him. In truth, she was ashamed. She was a weapon and she was supposed to have no fear, and yet she had lost the ability to keep pushing it back while they trudged through the tunnel towards the heart of the compound.   
“You’re scared.”  
“Your mom’s scared.” Vivienne squeezed her eyes shut. Not the time or place or person. “Sorry.”  
Rumlow ignored her remark. “Don’t think about it. Think about something else. Regardless of whether you’re scared or not, we’re doing this. Regardless of whether we live or not, this is going to happen. Doesn’t mean you gotta commit yourself to fate just yet.”  
Vivienne tried to find a lifeline in his words. “Well what should I think about?”  
“I dunno.” Rumlow grunted a little when he took his next step. Vivienne could tell his leg was getting worse. “It doesn’t really matter. Something to take your mind off this.”  
Vivienne looked up at him. His determination was at some lofty amount that she doubted she could muster given the particular circumstances. “Are you thinking of something else?”  
Vivienne felt Rumlow’s muscles relax a little over her shoulder. He looked down at her. “Everyone has a sanctuary.”  
“I guess.” Vivienne thought of sitting with Clint at Charlie’s and passing her field tests and shooting close to perfect scores on her targets at the range and even nights spent alone at her apartment just taking in the day, but above all right now, one memory seemed to be the most important. She had no earthly idea why. “Is it weird that one of my favorite memories so far is sparring with you that one day when I was so fucking hungover and you had that—haha, that hole in your sock?” Vivienne chuckled, the memory springing forth.  
Rumlow snorted. “Yeah, but why is that so funny?”  
Vivienne shook her head. “I dunno, it’s just like—here’s you, this badass trying to teach me these badass moves and then there’s your pinkie toe, too.” Vivienne laughed. “Did you take that nail out of your floor?”  
Rumlow started to smile a little. Was it genuine? “Yeah. I did that first thing when I got home before I went out to buy socks.”  
There was a silence. Rumlow had left it off as if he were about to say more. Vivienne narrowed her eyes. “Were you trying to be funny just now?”  
“Was it funny?”  
“Ha, not really, but it was a good try.” Vivienne smiled into the darkness of the tunnel before them, but it faded a little as she searched for other things to think about “And the day before we came here, too. That was a good memory.” Her thoughts drifted a little. She had Rumlow alone and they were about to walk into what could be their last few minutes together on this Earth. Everything was on the table.  
“Hey,” she said cautiously. “I don’t want to make this like super awkward, but you’ve been really different lately.”  
“Really.”  
“Yeah. Moody. Grumpy. I mean, that’s you pretty much on the daily anyways, but recently you haven’t even been training with us and I just wanted to know, you know, before I possibly die, if it was something I did.”  
Rumlow drew a long breath. His sigh that followed said a lot and though Vivienne knew he probably wouldn’t admit it, she had the feeling that she did have something to do with it.   
“It was nothing you did wrong, Donahue.”  
Vivienne mentally urged him to get past the sugarcoat.   
“It was something I did. But it really doesn’t matter anymore. Things might change after this.”   
Vivienne felt Rumlow’s eyes on her and she met his gaze.   
“I’m pretty glad things worked out the way they did,” he said.  
“We’re gonna die.”  
“On our own terms.”  
“What does it matter?” Vivienne felt a surge of unwarranted frustration rush through her. “We’re gonna die. You know, people in movies and stuff are always so heroic about facing certain death and shit, but you can’t be like that. This I real life—there are still things I wanna do and say—“  
“Then do and say the things you can.”  
There was a set of stairs leading out of the murky water a few paces before them. Vivienne’s stomach felt knotted up. She didn’t want to leave this tunnel. Leaving it might mean that she would never have the opportunity to be in this reality again.   
“Ok.” She said. She stopped in front of the stairs and shrugged his arm a little to give her shoulder a break. She winced at the dulled pain that throbbed on her other side from her gunshot wound. Rumlow grabbed the railing by the staircase and checked the gun again, slowly climbing the stairs to the door at the top.   
Vivienne looked up at him, her heart beginning its crescendo. “Wait.”  
Rumlow looked back at her.   
“Look, I know I’m about to break one of the first rules you gave me, but I don’t wanna die without saying this…”  
Rumlow tilted his head a little to the side and rocked back to recount the step he had taken, bringing him closer to her. “What is it, Donahue.”  
Vivienne shook her head. “I…Brock—I’m really going to miss you when I die.”  
Brock took another step closer to her and further from the door. Vivienne wondered how he had gotten so close. He was looking at her that way he did, but she held his gaze, trying to see through him the way he did her.   
“I’m gonna miss you too, Vivienne.”  
It seemed like something else should happen, like maybe there was more to say or do, but Vivienne didn’t know what needed to happen next. Something ached inside of her heart.   
“I guess…” She breathed. “I guess let’s blow these motherfuckers up.”

Beyond the door was what appeared to be a control room. It was dark and its purpose only became apparent when Brock flipped a switch on the wall, illuminating the ancient beefy control panels that sat in a semicircle within with hazy light. Dust had collected heavily over everything and it filtered thickly through the air. Vivienne pulled the front of her parka up over her nose to avoid breathing the musty air directly.   
“My God. How old is this place?”  
Brock went forward to the panels. “Old.”   
He flipped a few more switches, waited, and then pressed and held a red button. The room whirred to life; lights blinked with 40s era bulbs and the control boards gained a red blush with the glow of its instruments.   
Vivienne stepped forward. “Why isn’t anyone here?”  
Brock yanked open a drawer below one of the panels, fanning away cobwebs that stretched in the new opening. “They probably don’t know about this room. No one would venture down a dark watery tunnel unless they knew something was down there. They adopted this complex as a base, but they didn’t build it. They stole it.”  
He seemed to find what he was looking for and he pulled out a dusty leather bound book.   
Vivienne looked around the room, searching for details that might give her a better story about the place. “Who did they steal it from? SHIELD?”  
Brock didn’t answer. Instead, he flipped quickly through the pages in the book, searching for something. His eyes flicked over the control panels, back at the page of the book, and then back up again at the console he had in front of him. He pulled his sleeve down over his palm and rubbed away a thick layer of grime that had covered a small clear panel. He hesitated and then pressed his thumb to it.   
The whirr in the room quickened a little as a computerized voice gargled to life.   
“Willkommen, Brock Rumlow.”  
Another light lit up on the other side of the console. It was fiery red and it glowed hotly beneath a dusty glass case. Brock looked back at Vivienne. His jaw was sharply outlined with red light.   
“Break that,” he said, nodding to the case.  
Vivienne came forward and pulled her knife from her pocket. She smashed the glass to reveal the red button. It was like something out of a movie. She looked over at Brock.  
“Vivienne. Listen to me,” he said, pausing for a minute before he went on slowly. “As soon as you push that I have to activate several voice commands in order to get the self destruct sequence rolling. Our cover is going to be blown—they can track where the self-destruct sequence has been initiated, but they can’t stop it. They don’t have the authority to override it, but they sure as hell aren’t gonna be too keen on letting us out alive for this.” Brock’s eyebrows knitted together and he leaned to take the weight off of his injured leg. “I’m not gonna ask you to stay after pushing the button. You have a better chance at getting away alive if you don’t.”  
Vivienne didn’t want to look away from him. She didn’t want this to be the last memory she had of him. She was the weapon that he had trained her to become and if she couldn’t die trying to get him out with her, then what was it all for?  
“I’m ready,” she said, her throat feeling raw.  
“Good.” Brock turned back to the console, pressing his thumb once again to the tiny panel.   
He took a breath. “Initiieren Sequenz…Self destruct.”  
The yellowish lights in the room flicked off, replaced by the glow of red bulbs mounted on the walls.   
“Vivienne…”  
Vivienne pressed the button.   
An alarm roared to life, shaking the cement floor beneath their feet. The computerized voice announced the event loudly above the ringing of the alarm.  
“SELF DESTRUCT ACTIVATED. FIVE MINUTES UNTIL SELF DESTRUCT.”  
Vivienne looked back over at Brock. He was reading a code from the book, red light splashing the details of his face into dramatic extremes. His voice was raised above the noise and he gripped the book with the sureness of his intent.   
Vivienne wasn’t about to leave.  
She drew her bowie knife out of the sheath from her thigh. Brock had her handgun and Rollins was God only knows where with her rifle, so it left her with only the knife to defend herself. She readied herself at the door. It would take able-bodied men a lot less time to trudge through the duct they had come through to get here, especially since Vivienne had broken all of the cumbersome ice already. She would be ready for them when they got there.   
She felt a hand grab her arm. Brock pulled her back from the door and grabbed the doorknob. “I’m going first, Vivienne,” he said. “You only got that knife—you’re not gonna beat bullets with that.”   
“Are you saying I’m bad with a knife?”  
“I’m saying shut up and follow me.”  
Vivienne snorted as Brock threw open the door. The tunnel was clear for now, but distant shouts carried from the end of the passage to where they stood.  
“Let’s go.”   
Vivienne instinctually pushed herself under brock’s arm, bracing him where his leg was starting to buckle. They moved forward at a more hurried pace than before. They had an explosion to beat.   
The frigid water churned up and soaked into the bottom of their pants over their boots, but they couldn’t slow down. The end of the tunnel seemed a lot further away than it had been before.  
“C’mon, keep moving--!”   
Vivienne was barely aware that she had slowed her pace, but apparently Brock had been perceptive enough to sense it.  
“Stoy!”   
The sudden shout came from ahead of them and both Vivienne and Brock looked up in alarm. Brock raised the handgun. Someone had heard them.  
“Stoy! TEPER’!”  
The voice wavered a little. It was a single person.  
Brock adjusted his aim based on the voice and fired. There was a huff from the would-be assaulter and then a splash. They hurried forward, coming to the end of the tunnel. The Russian’s body was splayed out over the stairs to the door out. The door was open and the hall beyond was empty. Vivienne grabbed the limp man’s arm and heaved him off of the steps, leaving him submerged in the frigid water.   
Several shots rang out, reverberating around the metal tunnel. Vivienne looked up to see a group of shadowy figures running through the hall towards them.  
“Brock!”  
But Brock was already on it, pummeling their attackers back with a swathe of carefully aimed bullets. Shots few by Vivienne’s shoulder and grazed her parka, but she pushed forward, stepping over bodies and bullet casings that littered the floor and threatened to slow them down. Brock finally cleared the hall.  
“Move, Vivienne!”  
“I AM. If you weren’t so FUCKING HEAVY.”  
They reached the end of the hall. There were two different directions they could go. There were shouts and the thunder of approaching footfalls from their left.  
“Right.”  
Vivienne elbowed Brock. “Jinx.”  
The Computerized voice rang out again over the alarm. “One minute until self destruct.”  
“We’re not gonna make it.”  
They moved faster through the next hall of the dimly lit complex, pushing through a set of double doors at the end of their path. The doors opened to a shaky metal bridge of scaffolding that jutted out above an expansive room filled with giant iron vats. They ran out onto the quaking bridge, their boots threatening to make it give away.   
Suddenly the thunder of a distant explosion shook the whole room. Vivienne and Brock grabbed the railings, lowering their center of gravity.   
Vivienne looked wildly around at Brock as if looking for an explanation. Brock was looking back at the double doors.   
“It’s beginning.”  
He suddenly grabbed Vivienne’s arm and dragged her to her feet, ignoring their unsteady surroundings. They pounded over the walkway, moving as fast as they could to the doors on the other side of the room that seemed so far away.  
Vivienne heard the doors behind them burst open and shouts echoed across the expansive space. Bullets flew at them, pelting into the bridge and ricocheting off the railings.   
Another explosion shook the room; this time it was closer and Vivienne could feel its power pulse through her body, almost throwing her footing off.   
She clenched her teeth, pressing herself forward even though they wouldn’t make it.   
Suddenly, the floor of the giant lab below them burst upward in a fiery eruption of cement and metal shards. Chunks of the structure and its contents punched holes through the bridge around them. Vivienne saw it all happen beneath them and she felt the scaffolding give away under her feet. She felt her stomach lurch as she dropped suddenly, but then Brock grabbed her wrist and hauled her forward and onto the cement platform in front of the last set of doors. Vivienne wrenched one of the doors open, a blast of bright white and wintery snow greeting her, totally oblivious to the chaos that was ensuing inside of the compound’s walls.   
She didn’t take the time to think before she jumped.  
Had she taken a moment to let her eyes adjust to the wintery world that awaited them, maybe she wouldn’t have jumped and maybe she would have allowed the flames of the explosion to engulf her because either way it would have seemed that she wouldn’t survive.   
Now she fell.  
Vivienne hit the ground, the snow and sheer slope beneath her barely allowing her body to sustain such an impact. She slid over the slick ice layer atop the snow, struggling to stop, but the slope was too great to allow her boots traction. She looked around madly for some sort of salvation that might enable her to keep her life, but all she saw was Brock sliding below her. He didn’t seem conscious and was headed right for a sharp drop off. Beyond it, Vivienne could only make out open snowy air and the grey outline of distant mountains.   
“BROCK!”  
Then Vivienne did what everything in her body willed her against doing.   
She leapt in favor of the slope, grasping Brock’s wrist above his watch, snow pushing itself up her sleeves and down the neck of her parka. With her other hand she dug her bowie knife into the slope, praying that its blade would find something to hold to.   
With a sudden jolt, the blade found a niche in the rock beneath the snow and Vivienne’s body came to a sudden halt. She braced herself, but nothing could prepare her for the abrupt yank as Brock’s weight wrenched her arm out of its socket with a sudden pop. “AUUGH!!” Vivienne cried, tears springing immediately to her eyes with the unimaginable pain. She gritted her teeth, gasping shaky breaths. She felt a dizzy lightness spread through her system. Snow fell lightly down across her cheeks and the world was a snowglobe again. Black smoke slowly churned into the snowy atmosphere as her ears began to ring. She clung to consciousness long enough to feel a hand grasp her arm, then she closed her eyes, surrendering to the inevitability of sleep that beckoned to her.


	13. Hellbender Mini Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So did any of it make difference?

Vivienne woke up suddenly to a bright, bright light that dilated her pupil. Her instinct kicked in as her last memory came back and her muscles convulsed as she willed them into cooperation. She breathed hard, aware suddenly that an oxygen mask was pressed to her face. Firm hands pressed her back into a hard surface and though she tried to fight it, all of her muscles ached and it was hard to summon the strength she would need to make effectively defend herself. She blinked as her vision came back slowly. She saw a SHIELD emblem and then two faces looking down at her.   
“Vivienne. Relax. You’re going to be ok.”   
She recognized the voice before the details of the faces came into clarity. “Clint…”  
“Easy, Vi.”  
Vivienne felt so warm with all of the feelings that surged through her. She smiled a little, but it hurt because her lips were chapped. “Hey.”  
“Hey.” Clint managed a smile. “You’re back with us now and we’re headed home.”  
Vivienne suddenly felt her stomach turn as the realization hit her. “Rumlow. Where..? Did I…? I don’t remember…” Her head pounded as her frustration built with her inability to think clearly. She thought that maybe it would help to sit up, so she summoned what strength she had and began to curl forward. A sharp pain shot across her abdomen.  
“Nononono—you sit down. Rumlow’s alive. He’s fine.” Clint pushed her back until she was lying down again. “Relax, Vivienne, or you’re gonna break more ribs.”  
“I broke ribs?” Vivienne looked to the side, taking in her surroundings. She was in a quinjet. No one else was in sight except for Clint and the medic.   
“Yeah and you popped your arm out of place, so good job.”  
“Thanks.” She looked back up at Clint. His eyes were very blue. She felt like she had been gone a long time because as she looked at him, she noticed more and more details in his face that had never been more apparent before.   
He smiled a little. “Get some sleep, Vi. We’ve got a little ways to go and you need it.”  
Vivienne tried to laugh, but it came out raspier that she had anticipated. “Whatever.”

 

 

Agent Jack Rollins stood in the corner of the large office, his shoulders back and his posture quite formal overall—the idea of perfection had been beaten into him his entire life, so reverting to this particular stance came instinctually and sometimes he wasn’t aware he was doing it. Cooper gave him shit about it, but Cooper hadn’t had the father that Jack had and Cooper wasn’t there at the moment to make fun of him. Instead Rollins stood by the door alone, waiting for a proper invitation before he allowed himself to walk toward his superior’s desk.   
“Agent Rollins.”  
Rollins responded accordingly, accepting that Pierce’s curt recognition would have to suffice as an invitation.   
He inclined his head respectfully. “Sir.”  
Pierce was sitting at his desk. As Rollins walked up to him, he took off his glasses and sat back in his chair a little further, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  
“Agent Rollins, I suppose you know why you’re here.”   
Rollins unconsciously rubbed his arm a little; the puncture wound from the needle the Russians had used to drug him with had become infected and it was still healing. It looked a lot better than it had several days ago when SHIELD had lifted them out of Russia, though.   
“I have an idea, Sir.”  
“Well that’s good,” said Pierce. “Because I hate explaining myself.”  
Rollins looked down him, fully aware that the humor to his tone wasn’t there to make him feel comfortable.  
“It seems that Agent Rumlow has been unable to meet with me as of yet, though we are scheduled for a chat tomorrow. It would appear that he’s preoccupied with medical appointments and physical training—of course I admire that he’s so eager to get back out in the field, but I feel like I’ve been kept in the dark long enough about what transpired in Russia and I need you to help me paint a better picture here.” He smiled a little at Rollins. “Can you help me with that?”  
Jack doubted that Pierce had ever been stabbed, much less had to recover from multiple serious wounds. “Yes, Sir.”  
“Good. No wonder you’re Rumlow’s favorite dog—so agreeable.”  
Rollins blinked coolly, but didn’t say anything.   
“Now. I’ve read the reports. I know the story that’s going to get entered into SHIELD files, but what I really am curious about is what you saw and what you did in Russia and I want you to start from the good part. The part where Agent Donahue is somehow still with us.”  
Rollins sighed.   
He had talked to Brock that morning and Brock had told him everything. The conversation had been had over a steaming cup of black coffee in Rumlow’s office. He had, of course, already known before they left for Russia that it had been Rumlow’s intention to put a bullet in the back of Vivienne’s head when they landed. It wasn’t the only detail in the mission they were carrying out on Russian soil, but it had been an important factor. Then the mission went bust and while the team had been drooling on themselves in drug-induced hallucinations of horrific past realities, that girl they were supposed to have shot and killed came back to save their lives. Rumlow had been just as shocked as he had when her face was the first sight he saw upon awaking.   
And then Rumlow had gotten silent and he had stared into the black depths of his coffee. It was only after a long minute of consideration that he recounted to Jack how Vivienne Donahue had saved his life and how, as he held her in the snow waiting for the SHIELD airlift, he could have easily shot her then. He could have snapped her neck or smothered her or buried the bowie knife to the hilt in her chest and then pushed her off the sheer face of the cliff. There would have been no body, no evidence; it would have been a fucking cakewalk. But instead he held her because she had held on so tightly to him. He’d said that he had no idea why he did it, but the way he stared into his coffee argued otherwise.   
And Jack knew that now, in Pierce’s office, for the sake of everything Rumlow had ever done for him, he would defend whatever the impulse was that had kept Agent Donahue alive four nights ago.  
“We were carrying out the first part of the plan,” he started slowly. “Donahue was down on the ground and Agent Rumlow had a clear headshot. He fully intended to kill her and the bullet did leave his rifle, but we found out later that his aim was skewed when he was shot in the leg by our attackers. We thought she was dead, but she proved us wrong when she showed up to rescue us.”  
“You saw this happen.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
“And he was going to kill her.”  
“Yes, Sir. He shot his rifle. The bullet was intended to kill her, but his aim—“  
“Yes, his aim was thrown off. I heard that part already.”  
Rollins looked up a little to meet the eyes of his superior. Pierce was analyzing his response.   
“Your attackers?” Pierce asked.  
“I would rather not make assumptions—“  
“This isn’t a field report, Agent Rollins.” Pierce tilted his head to the side a little, looking down his nose at Rollins. He waved a hand at the empty face of his desk. “As you can see, I’m not writing this down.”  
Rollins’ jaw clenched. “I suppose we have our suspicions about them…”  
Pierce was intrigued even though he didn’t seem to want to let on that he was.  
“We think they were Leviathan.”  
There was no flinch, no snicker, no anger. Pierce seemed unperturbed by the answer that should have shaken his foundation to the ground. Maybe he didn’t believe him. He started to squint a little, but his voice didn’t waver when he talked. “You were supposed to rendezvous at Grey Ledge with team six.”  
“We were attacked and they took us to Grey Ledge, where they had claimed the base. On the way out, I found team six in a back room in pieces. I assume the team told the Leviathan men that we were coming—“  
“STOP saying Leviathan if there is no proof that it was them.”  
Rollins bit his tongue.   
“Team six is gone.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
“Grey Ledge?”  
“There was no salvaging it. Agent Rumlow set the self destruct.”  
“The files…?”  
“The files had remained encrypted, Sir. They were not broken. Whatever had been locked into the system in Grey Ledge had been sent to Hell’s Heaven.”   
Pierce sighed, finally breaking eye contact with Rollins as he let his gaze drop to his desk. He seemed deep in thought, considering everything Rollins had told him. Rollins waited, hands clasped behind his back.  
“What does SHIELD know?” Pierce finally murmured.  
“Shield thinks that we were ambushed in by a terrorist organization that we had been sent to take down. We escaped and leveled their only base, rendering them powerless. The mission was considered a success.”  
Pierce looked back up at Rollins. “What does Agent Donahue know?”  
Rollins looked back at him evenly. “Agent Donahue knows what SHIELD knows. If she knew otherwise, she never would have come back to help us get out. She’s already been debriefed. She shared her part, and nothing caused me to question her ignorance in the matter.”  
“Hm.” Pierce opened his desk drawer, bringing out a small leather bound notebook. A large black star boldly graced the red cover. “If there is a problem with the girl, I’m authorizing you to override whatever authority Agent Rumlow has over you to take care of it. I feel like you are the type of person who takes care of things. As for Russia…” He looked down at the notebook. “I’ll have someone look into it.”  
Rollins inclined his head to show that he had heard Pierce’s request, but the request alone would cause him to proceed very cautiously now.  
Pierce was preoccupied with what was within the notebook’s pages, but not so much that he forgot to dismiss Rollins.  
“Hail HYDRA.”  
Rollins nodded curtly. “Hail HYDRA.”


	14. Hellbender Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A well-deserved trip to the Split Keg. Rollins is nice for once. Rumlow fends off an asshole and drives a black Defender. Cooper gets sat upon. Vivienne drinks a little too much. Again.

Vivienne yawned and brought her coffee cup to her lips as if it might keep her from yawning again. She had mostly brushed her hair and she had mostly gotten ready for work—if one could count throwing on the baggiest sweatpants she had and a cutoff t-shirt she had found at the bottom of a huge stack of unsorted clothes which turned out to have an advertisement for Budweiser plastered across the front.   
After a short paid leave which had been given to her upon her return from Russia in order to give her time (which seemed less than adequate) to recover from her injuries, she had found getting up that morning to be a bitch. Sure, she was glad to be back at work because one could only play so many video games and eat so much pizza before their eyes started to water and they began to feel sick and sluggish, but awakening at five really sucked, too. Hence the venti coffee.  
She was a little excited, though. The men would all be there today, the first time she had seen all of them together since Russia. She had met with Rollins to be debriefed before her leave and she had seen Cooper across the parking lot walking out to his giant dodge pickup, but the rest of the team had been more elusive. She could have questioned Clint about the details of the rescue when he came over to break in the new video game she had gotten, but since he hadn’t brought it up, she didn’t prod him for information. She didn’t know if she necessarily wanted to talk about it either. It was really fuzzy—the whole escape thing. She remembered jumping from the building into a sea of white and the horrible excruciating pain when her arm was yanked from its socket, but not much else. She assumed Rumlow could provide her with answers since he apparently had survived, but she didn’t know if she should ask him or leave the mystery to the past. They were both alive and that was all that mattered.  
Vivienne swiped her access card and placed her hand on the scanner.  
“Donahue, Vivienne M. Access granted.”  
Vivienne walked through the dark security portal and on down the hall towards the Gym. She drew a deep breath, bringing all of the subtle smells out of her memory and into her system and allowing it to rejuvenate her with its familiarity.  
She pushed open the door to the gym and walked inside.   
Cooper and Rollins stood in the middle of the gym; Cooper was showing Rollins something on his phone. Vivienne guessed Crue and Henley were still in the locker room.  
“Hey, guys.” She said, walking over to them.  
“Well,” said cooper, looking up and drawing out his L’s. “If it isn’t little Vivienne-kickass-Donahue.”  
Vivienne warmed immediately to Cooper’s greeting, unable to hold back her smile. “The one and only.”  
“Tch!” Cooper punched her playfully on the arm, the force of it pushing her shoulder back. “Listen to this cocky little spitfire. You’d better keep that in check—Henley’s a little sour he was out for the count and ‘bout as helpful as a bag of rocks—“  
Vivienne shrugged and punched her fist into her palm. “Hey, any time he’s game for round two…”  
Rollins shook his head. “I had to put up with a lot of shit from Crue about how heavy your doped ass was, too, Cooper.”  
“Well, he didn’t have a right to bitch—I threw a good lotta punches before I went down, if I do recall.” Cooper said, trying to call attention away from his reddening cheeks. “I did my part.”  
Vivienne snickered at the look Rollins gave him before she waved her coffee cup towards the locker room doors. “Hey, I’ll be back in a minute, ‘k?”  
She turned and went into the locker room, feeling a lot differently about the mission now that Rollins and Cooper were making light of it. It didn’t have to be this thing that loomed over her head before she went to sleep if she didn’t allow herself to think about it as such.

She remerged from the locker room with Henley and Crue a few minutes later and they walked towards where Rollins and Cooper were still standing.   
Rollins finally broke his conversation off with Cooper and he turned to the rest of the group.  
“Alright.” He said, clapping his hands together. ”Ten laps to start. Easy as fuck because today is gonna be easy as fuck. We don’t want anyone popping stitches or squirting arterial blood out of healing wounds, capiche? We wanna be set back into the field ASAP.” He paused and looked around at the group, who was waiting for him to go on. “Well? What are you waiting for? The laps aren’t gonna run themselves.”  
The men hauled into motion and Vivienne and Rollins fell in behind them.   
“Hey,” said Vivienne, matching her stride with Rollins. “Where’s Rumlow?”  
“In a meeting.” Said Rollins.  
“Tch. The guy’s always in meetings.”   
“Seems like it.”  
“When’s he gonna be back?”  
“I dunno, Donahue.” There was a silence. “What’s got you interested?”  
Vivienne snorted, shaking her head. “Nothing. I was just wondering.” She decided then that it would be best to conceal her concern and curiosity about Rumlow and what had transpired in Russia. She didn’t want the men to know that her mind was dwelling on the event that much, especially when it seemed like they were already moving so quickly beyond it. She wasn’t about to pour her heart and soul out to Rollins—the guy barely liked her—but everything still seemed so surreal and she wanted to talk about it to somebody. It was aching as a reminder throughout her body, hovering on the edge of unspoken conversation.  
It wanted to be explained, understood. But every time she had the opportunity to talk about it, she shied away from it.   
She wouldn’t talk about it now. Now wasn’t the right time, place, or person.   
Vivienne realized that Rollins seemed to be waiting for her to go on. She tied back everything that was buzzing through her head at the moment and forced herself to smile, urging herself to say something that would get him off of her trail. “I was wondering ‘cause we always do boring stuff when you’re in charge.”  
Rollins looked down at her. “Donahue…“  
Vivienne held up a hand to him, feeling herself slip easily into her feigned lightheartedness. “Nonono…just wait. After we run, you’re going to tell us what we’re going to focus on today and it’s going to be boring.” She smiled up at Rollins, who was looking wiltingly ahead. “Just wait.”  
Rollins shook his head and Vivienne’s smile shrank enough to lose its purpose.

Vivienne had been reading through the same sentence over and over—it didn’t make it any clearer to her than it had been the first time. She leaned her cheek heavily into her palm with a groan. She looked up, but the other men were actually reading the damn packet. Hell, Crue even had a highlighter out and in use.   
Rumlow had created a new scenario control document after the Russia mission and everyone was supposed to read it—it was pretty much the same document Vivienne had read when she had first started training for STRIKE, but with a few sequences changed. It was like playing where’s waldo, skimming all of the information she had already read to try to find which sections had been added. Forty-five motherfucking pages of twelve point font, one-inch margins ‘where’s waldo’. She tried to catch Rollins’ eye to let him know exactly how boring the activity was, but he was busy reading and intentionally looking everywhere but back at her, avoiding the ‘I told you so’ that waited on the edge of her tongue.  
Vivienne sighed. When she elicited no response from Rollins, she decided that he definitely wasn’t paying enough attention to her to notice if she was reading or not. She slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and sent Clint a text about how bored she was. She weighed it down with a bunch of emojis because she knew he hated it when people sent him emoji-riddled texts. Work was apparently going to be short today, so her endgame was definitely to try to get him to ask her if she wanted to hang out. She went back to skimming the pages in front of her and waited, her leg bouncing impatiently. Her phone vibrated in her pocket after a few minutes and she chanced a look down at her lap to read the text.  
Clint had texted back a grumpy little note about how he was stuck in a huge line at the shitty coffee shop and the least she could do would be to make her texts emoji-free. All of this was, of course, said in the kindest form when it came to word choice.   
Vivienne smirked, suppressing a snicker, and started furiously tapping something witty back.  
“Donahue!”  
Vivienne startled and looked up, dropping her phone on the floor with a clatter.  
Rumlow stood in the doorway of the conference room. “Put the phone away.”  
Vivienne felt her breath catch in her throat—she didn’t know how to respond. The last time she had seen him he had been behind her running, pushing her forward, his teeth clenched, bullets flying past their shoulders. The memory washed over her with such clarity that she could feel her heart hammering and her chest compress with the reminiscence of smoke filling her lungs.  
“I—I—I just…” Vivienne stammered.   
Rumlow came forward into the room, reaching down in front of her to turn the document toward him. “What are you supposed to be reading? The revisions I had to find time to write between one and two AM this morning? Hm.”   
Behind her in the room she heard Cooper chuckle. “Ruh-roh.”  
Vivienne looked up at Rumlow. She was at a loss.  
Rumlow clapped his hands, making Vivienne jump. “Alright, boys. Now I think Crue and I both heard Rollins offer to buy a round when we got back, didn’t we, Crue?”  
Crue’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yes, Sir.”  
Rollins rubbed his chest, knowing that he had no way of getting out of the corner he was in. “Heh. Alright, well keep the tab domestic an we have a deal.”  
Cooper clapped a hand on Rollins’ shoulder. “The Split Keg?”  
“Looks like it.”  
“Whoo! I’m gonna get fucked up tonight!” Cooper clapped Rollins’ shoulder for emphasis with the fall of each stressed syllable. “You know they got the prettiest girls—“  
Rollins sighed. “Prostitutes.”  
“Naw, man, I mean real classy chicks—“  
“Hookers.”  
“Aw, man give me a break. Maybe, but these girls…” He broke off with a whistle.  
Vivienne watched as the men started getting up and laughing over some memorable evening they had had last time they had attended that particular bar. Something about Rollins getting drunk and trying to follow some girl home.  
Vivienne watched everything as if she weren’t really taking part. It was as if the reality in which she and the men almost died in Russia—her reality—had all of the sudden been pushed to the backburner. It didn’t even seem important to them anymore. She wondered how a person could just pick up and keep going as if it had never happened. Things could have turned out so differently…  
But now it didn’t seem like any of them were choosing to remember that.  
“Donahue.”  
Vivienne was snapped from her haze and she found herself again, stumbling back to the here and now. She looked up at Rumlow, who was watching her. She wondered if he had been watching her this whole time.  
“Hey.” She said.  
“Hey.”  
She started to struggle with what she might say next.  
“You good?”  
Vivienne snorted. Hell, that was funny. Maybe he did have a sense of humor. “Oh yeah. Yup. I’m real good. I’m really…” She gave him finger guns. “Fan-tastic.”  
Rumlow’s eyebrows drew together. “Ok…”  
Then Vivienne realized that she had misread him altogether.   
She sighed, shaking her head. “Sorry. I mean I’m sorry, Sir. I just… I don’t even know.”  
Rumlow looked down at the table, seemingly compromised by the awkward silence as well. He looked pretty put together for a guy who had been stabbed multiple times, had been shot, and had jumped out of a huge warehouse into a frigid wasteland. He had taken time to keep in check the facial wiskers that he had grown while he had been drugged and kept captive and his hair was freshly cut and gelled and he smelled like cologne. He wore a clean black shirt and his arms looked good, pulling the sleeves in all of the right places. Vivienne looked down at his watch—the fancy black military accessory that served as more than just a timepiece. She spaced out a little and she could almost feel the watch band in her grasp before the pop, the pain, and then the nothingness.   
“Actually I do know…sorta.” She said slowly.  
It came exactly on time as Vivienne knew it would—the horrible horrible knot that threatened to come up from her heart and into her throat. The anxiety of actually unleashing this confession from her lips. “I just thought that maybe it wouldn’t be this hard to shake everything that went down—I mean—I thought I was going to die. I legit thought I wouldn’t be back here and I guess…being back here maybe is what’s got me thrown…” She trailed off, totally aware that maybe she had said too much and maybe she had said it to the wrong person at the wrong time. Either way, it had been heard and it wasn’t going to be unheard.  
“Hmm.”   
Vivienne looked slowly back at Rumlow. She had really expected a better answer than that. The silence was so empty that Vivienne could hear the clock ticking on the wall. Rumlow noticed that she was waiting and he looked up.  
“What.”  
“Hmm. You said ‘hmm’ and I just said that I’m having a hard time here.” Vivienne lifted her palms in defeat. “You’re my S.O. and you were there and one would think that you might have some sort of answer for me other than ‘hmm’.”  
“Ok.” Rumlow put his palms down on the table and leaned over it. “Well what do you want me to say, Donahue? You want me to pat you on the back and say ‘It must be tough for you’? You want me to pity the fact you’re still alive and so is everybody else? I don’t see the problem here.”  
Vivienne looked at him, a little taken aback at his bluntness. It didn’t take long at all for her frustration to flare up. “That’s not the point.” She said, very aware of the sharpness of her tone. “I’m not looking for a fricking award or for pity. You’re totally missing what I’m saying. Just listen, ok? I know we’re all alive and, you know, that’s great. It is. But really some of us should be dead, me included. I don’t get how you guys can just pretend it didn’t even happen. I don’t know what kind of drugs you guys are on that made you forget that shit, but please, Sir, hand them over ‘cause, like I said, I’m having a shitty time here.” Vivienne stopped. “And I’m not trying to get pity I just wanna know how you guys are doing this.”  
Rumlow sighed. Vivienne knew he was watching her too, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t want to see the judgment that might be lurking in his gaze or the disgust at how weak she was pulling the corners of his mouth into a grimace.  
“You know,” said Rumlow. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. Long enough to know that you can’t think about it. You do it. It’s your job. Doesn’t mean that some things don’t deserve consideration, but pick and choose those things.” He paused. “Asking yourself why you’re alive shouldn’t be one of those things that bothers you or else you’re gonna drive yourself to the end of a short shitty life. You take the hand you’re dealt and you keep playing. You picked this for yourself, Donahue. You worked your ass off to get where you are. If you didn’t think that this gig might be tough, then lemme tell you—you’re in the wrong place.”  
Vivienne looked up at him. She had expected a look of accusation, but there was nothing like that in his eyes.   
“…But I think you knew it wasn’t going to all be daisies. I think if you knew you couldn’t handle this, then you wouldn’t still be here. You could have been gone after the first day of training, but you came back the next day, didn’t you?”  
Vivienne smiled a little, her frustration going as fast as it had come, the reminiscence of how much of an asshole he had been contrasting almost humorously to the words he was saying now. “Yeah.”  
“Well somehow I think you’ll get past this, too.” Rumlow raised his eyebrow. “And look at that. You’ve got me patting you on the back.”  
“I haven’t heard you say ‘It must be tough for you’, though, so I think we’re in the clear.” Vivienne said, laughing a little.   
Rumlow pushed himself off the table. “I’m not gonna say that.”  
“Good. I don’t need that anyways. But hey, speaking of ‘it must me tough for you’, how are you doing anyways? Last time I checked you weren’t taking it easy on those wounds when we were running through an explosion.”  
Rumlow rubbed the back of his neck, not intending for the conversation to turn towards him. “I’m fine, Donahue.”  
“Ok, well… that’s good.” Vivienne pushed back her chair and bent to pick up her phone from the floor. She grunted a little with the dull pain that throbbed in her chest. “Urgh. Did you break any ribs? I broke ribs. Broken ribs suck.”  
“I broke one.”  
“Hah!” Vivienne waved her phone at him. “I got you beat! I broke two.”  
They looked at eachother. It was obvious that Rumlow was trying to keep the beginnings of a smile from creeping across his lips. Vivienne suddenly felt like she should say something—maybe something else witty—something to make him smile the rest of the way. The air felt too electric and her heart was in her ears; it could have been set off by something he said or the way he said it or the way he was looking at her or anything else about him. She knew now that he was the epicenter of this crazy sensation that struck when she least expected it. She knew exactly what she was feeling, what was causing all of these butterflies to brush around inside of her—it was like the fine line of ecstasy between being tipsy and drunk.   
“Hey, so…” Rumlow said, interrupting her before she could start filling the silence with clever remarks. “I think Rollins owes you a drink, too, since you are part of the team. If you were interested in going out tonight.”  
Vivienne looked at him. “Really? I—I don’t have any plans, so I mean, yeah. Yeah, sure. That would be fun.”  
“Ok, well, I’ll text you the address of the bar. It’s hard to find, but it’s worth it. It’s a bit of a tradition.”  
Vivienne beamed and the Russian snow melted away out of her mind. “You want my number?”  
Rumlow shook his head. “It’s in your files. I got it already.”  
“Oh. Ok.”  
“Ok. See you there at nine.”

 

Vivienne had never had much of a problem with throwing on clothes to go out, but that particular night had caused her a great deal of frustration. Everything seemed too much or not enough of what she was looking for. She looked down at the pile of clothes on the floor that she had deemed unfit and sighed, kicking them around so they weren’t in the middle of her room. Her phone buzzed on her dressed and she hopped over to it, snatching it from its perch.  
She had texted Clint about everything on her way out to her car and so now he was caught up to the fact that she was going out to a bar with the team that night. He hadn’t texted back until now and she was worried that he would feel like she had ditched him because she pretty much had, even though there was no official plan for the night until Rumlow had invited her out. She read the text.  
Be safe. Have fun  
Yeah, he was upset, and it tugged at her heart a little that she was doing this to him, but they always went out together, and surely one night out with somebody else wouldn’t hurt.   
She finally found a pair of pants that fit in all of the right places and she pulled on a v-neck—casual, but less so than a regular t-shirt.  
Vivienne walked through her apartment, choosing to ignore everything that needed maintenance for now, including the cabinets in the kitchen that still weren’t completely renovated yet. Her phone buzzed again and this time the number was unknown. The text was an address and she added Rumlow to her contacts. She paused, trying to come up with a good contact name to save him under, not that she would probably be texting him much. She smiled a little, fingering her gauges, and saved him under “Hippie Shit”. 

The cab driver didn’t know the bar personally, but he entered the address into his GPS and they pulled away from the curb outside Vivienne’s apartment complex. The route led them deep into the city and back and forth through one way roads and narrow busy streets. Vivienne pulled at the shoulder of her shirt to tug it away from the sweat that glistened over her skin. It was hot in the cab and rolling down the window wouldn’t do much good since it was just as humid outside. The sun had already sunk below the horizon, though, and Vivienne knew the uncomfortable pressing heat wouldn’t last too much longer.   
Vivienne fiddled with her phone. No one had texted her, but she kept checking it anyways. She was nervous—it was the kind of mentality that a little kid might have about their teacher living at the school—it just hadn’t occurred to her that any of the men had lives outside of STRIKE. She knew she had one, maybe it was a weak excuse for a social life since work was so consuming, but it was still a personal life. Her mind was quick to conjure up images of Rollins making macaroni and cheese, Cooper doing laundry, and hell, even Rumlow doing dishes. They were people, too—people who could kill other people without thinking twice, but they were still people. She suddenly wanted to know a lot more about the men she would gladly lay down her life for.   
The cab slowed a little as they bounced down a potholed back road—it was almost like an ally in that the buildings were so close together. Vivienne looked out the window, searching for something that might look like a bar.   
The cabbie turned around. “I don’t quite know, miss. I’m not too familiar with this part, but the GPS says that we’re here.”  
“Sorry about the trouble,” said Vivienne, handing him the money that she owed. “But I’ll walk from here. I think I’ll have an easier time finding it. Thanks.”  
She got out of the cab and swung her purse over her shoulder. The cab pulled away and she was left standing in the darkening street. She walked forward, looking around at the buildings surrounding the area.  
“Hey!”  
Vivienne turned, squinting in the halflight. “Hey…”  
A man walked forward out of the shadows and Vivienne didn’t even recognize him until he was closer.   
“Cooper,” Vivienne said, a little relieved it wasn’t a creepy stranger. “Hey, you look nice.”  
Cooper had his hair pulled back into a ponytail and he wore a clean white shirt that emphasized his tanned skin. His boots and belt buckle gave away anything he might have tried to hide about his Texas heritage. He smiled when he got closer and plucked a cigarette from his lips. “Thanks, girlie. I’m tryina score tonight, if you know what I mean.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Sure. So where is this bar anyways?”  
Cooper nodded over his shoulder. “Behind that door. It’s pretty hidden, but they keep it that way—it’s kinda a member’s only thing. You don’t know where it is, you don’t belong there. We probably wouldn’t have let you in on this had you not saved our bacon. This is how we pay you back.”  
Vivienne squinted at him. “Wow, gee, thanks.”  
“Oh yeah,” said Cooper, taking a draw off of his cigarette and flicking off the ash at the end. “And since this isn’t work, you can call me Clyde.” He turned around and Vivienne followed him back to where a little light shone over a seemingly ordinary door.   
“So what happened to your toothpicks?” Asked Vivienne.  
Cooper crushed the end of his cigarette into the brick wall of the structure and turned the doorknob. “Russia.”

They walked into a dimly lit hallway, passing a kissing couple and several people on cell phones, and on toward another door at the end. A massive mountain of a man stood in front of it. Cooper nodded at him and the man nodded back, stepping aside to let them pass though. Vivienne heard muffled music, which leapt astronomically in volume when Cooper opened the door and held it for her. Vivienne walked in, trying her best to take in everything at once. The space was lit with a purple-blue light that was thrown from multiple glowing logos across the room where the bar was. Brick walls enclosed the room that seemed much bigger than what one might guess by glancing at the door from outside. The place was packed—women with thick make-up wove in between a mix of mostly men, many of whom were big and thickly-built like the rest of the STRIKE team. Vivienne was struck at once with the thought that maybe she had walked into some sort of gathering for the world’s deadliest individuals.   
She followed Cooper through the crowd, relying on him for guidance since she was a good head shorter than the majority of the patrons who were laughing, smacking each other on the backs with more force than she knew she could be able to stand, and throwing back shots and waving sloshing steins of beer. Eventually they pushed and weaved their way to the bar where Cooper clapped Rollins on the back. Rollins turned around and sized up Vivienne, who offered an awkward wave.   
“Hey,” she said.   
Rollins seemed satisfied enough with her appearance to nod back. Cooper took a seat next to him and patted the bar stool on his other side for Vivienne to sit.   
Vivienne did, squeezing in the small space between Cooper and a huge tattooed guy—the first things she noticed was the voluptuous woman etched into the guy’s tree-trunk arm. Vivienne raised an eyebrow and turned her back to the guy to listen to what Rollins was saying.   
“—had to go back to his car. Crue’s still on his way. Henley opted out.” Rollins noticed that he had Vivienne’s attention. “What do you drink?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Anything.”  
Rollins snorted. “You tell me that and you’re gonna sit there all night with PBR. Unless that’s your idea of a good time…”  
“Hennessey.”   
Rollins chuckled, a rarity. “Hennessey it is.”  
The guy sitting beside Vivienne eventually got up and the stool was open for the taking. Cooper tapped the bar top to get Vivienne’s attention and pointed at the spot. “Hey, save that.”   
Vivienne put her purse on the stool and Cooper gave her the thumbs up before beginning a conversation with some girl who had walked up and was practically on his lap. Vivienne turned around on her bar stool and looked about the room, trying hard to be subtle with her people-watching. She hadn’t seen such an interesting group before. When she got tired of watching scantily-clad women grinding through the sea of drunk men, she whipped out her phone and tried to think of something to say about her outing to Clint that might make up for her absence.   
She had just tapped his name in her list of contacts when she felt a hand on her knee. She looked up into the unfocused blue eyes of a man she had never seen before. The purple light gave color to a shock of blonde hair and the man’s mouth was pulled into a smirk. “Hey,” he said. His breath reeked of sour whiskey.   
Vivienne looked down at his hand on her knee and then back up into his bleary gaze. He took the hint and released her, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just you looked so pretty sitting here all alone.”  
“I’m not alone,” said Vivienne, thinking quickly for an alibi. “My boyfriend had to use the bathroom, but he’s coming back, so…”  
The lie slipped out easily, her tone lacking any falter that might have given her away, but the man persisted, moving uncomfortably closer.   
“I have to say,” said the drunk. “He’s a lucky guy, but what’s he possibly got on this?” He indicated himself with a pat on his chest. “I’ve got an impressive record… seventy-five confirmed kills just this summer…You should consider yourself a special girl that a guy like me is interested in a girl like you...”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Ok. That’s nice, but no thanks. Like I said, I have a boyfriend.”  
The man laughed and Vivienne tried to ignore him and turn back around to the bar.   
“Is this your boyfriend’s chair?”   
She saw him pick up her purse off the barstool out of her peripherals. She gritted her teeth and snatched it out of his hands before he could sit down beside her. “Hey, asshole! Fuck off. I’m not interested.”  
“Asshole? Ouch.” The guy reached out and touched her chin. “I like you.”  
Vivienne slapped away his hand. “I said FUCK OFF.”  
Cooper turned around when he heard Vivienne’s raised voice. “Hey!”  
The drunk looked up and indicated Vivienne. “Hey, man. C’mon. Look at her—let me hit this ass before she’s gone for the night. Find your own game.”  
Rollins stood up behind Cooper and pushed back his sleeves. “What did you say?”  
The drunk man cleared his throat rudely and slapped his palm on Vivienne’s leg again. “I said…”  
He didn’t get to finish because a hand interrupted him, grabbing the front of his shirt and yanking him up off the bar stool. Rumlow had appeared out of nowhere. His nose was inches from the drunk’s and his eyes had a cutting sharpness to them. “Get your fucking whiskey dick outta my spot.” He snarled. “And move along or I’ll make it so we don’t have this kind of problem again. Understood?”  
The drunk laughed a little, then it died in his throat when he saw the intention lurking in Rumlow’s gaze. “OK. ok.”  
Rumlow shoved him back out of his grasp and turned to Vivienne, who had been watching in amusement. “I’m gonna sit here.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Be my guest.”  
Rumlow sat down and set his car keys and phone in front of him on the bar.  
“To be fair,” said Vivienne. “I had it covered. I was going to do that new thing you taught me—the spin off a right hook…”  
“Sure.” Rumlow brushed off the front of the crisp cream-colored dress shirt that he was wearing and started to roll up the sleeves. “I definitely saw that on its way. I must have ruined your whole plan.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne, taken aback a little by Rumlow’s banter. “Yeah you did.”  
He smelled like a mix of Listerine and cologne. A strand of hair was loose from his carefully constructed pompadour, probably mussed unintentionally when he had pulled that asshole out of the chair. He looked younger and less tired than he usually did. Maybe it was the adrenaline or the lighting or both. Either way, when he looked back at her, she had a hard time looking away.  
The evening started off a little after Crue found his way to the bar and Rollins ordered shots for them all. Cooper slid her a glass of Hennessey with a wink.   
Rollins looked down the line to make sure everyone had their shots before he raised his glass. “ Alright, I’m only saying this shit once, so listen. To my back and to Crue’s back for having to carry this sorry cowboy’s ass off of an icy mountainside…” he said, nodding at Cooper.   
Cooper shook his head. “Shove a cock in it, Jack.”  
“And to Brock for being the stubborn son-of-a-bitch who insisted he stay behind to blow their asses to kingdom come…”  
Rumlow raised his glass a little higher, exchanging nod with Rollins.  
“And to Donahue,” he paused, looking over at Vivienne.  
Vivienne felt her cheeks burn.  
“Turns out maybe you’re a better fit for the team than we gave you credit for. We’ve all done our fair share of pushing you around, but it’s hard to imagine us being here without you coming to rescue our drugged asses. Honestly, with all the hell we’ve put you through, we probably didn’t deserve it.”  
Rollins raised his glass toward Vivienne a little and she mirrored his gesture, trying very hard not to get emotional. Hell, that was the most Rollins had ever said to her. Ever.   
Rollins raised his glass the rest of the way up and Vivienne and the rest of the men joined him. “And lastly,” said Rollins. “To forgetting I ever said any of this sappy shit and putting on our big boy pants bright and early tomorrow morning after getting wasted tonight.”  
He threw back his shot and Vivienne downed hers, feeling the smooth whiskey slide down her throat, cool with a bitter punch at the end. She flipped her empty shot glass and set it down on the bar.   
“Don’t let us down now, Rollins,” said Cooper, setting his empty glass down with a clink.  
Rollins summoned the bartender. “Another round.”  
Vivienne took the shot that was poured for her and passed Rumlow the dark whiskey he had picked. He had been reading all of the initials and messages and quotes that had been etched onto the bar top by thousands of patrons over the years, but he looked up and took the whiskey when Vivienne guided it to him.   
“Any good ones?” Asked Vivienne.  
Rumlow shook his head. “Nothing classy, if you catch my drift.”  
“Yeah, but those are the best ones,” Vivienne snickered. “They don’t bother being poetic and fake. They just put it our there.”  
Rumlow snorted and put his finger over a scribbling of purple sharpie, reading. “Sure, like this anonymous tip: Call this number if you want to bring your understanding of butt plugs and jell-o to a whole new level.”  
“Oh my God,” said Vivienne, laughing. “Call the number. Please call it.”  
“No.”  
“Maybe it was that guy who was hitting on me.”  
Rumlow looked down into his shot. “Yeah you get some strange and very pathetic characters in here sometimes.”  
Vivienne couldn’t pass up the opportunity. “And here I was planning on not discussing your personality…”  
Rumlow’s eyebrows lifted a little with the surprise that Vivienne might take such a jab at him.  
Vivienne lifted her hands. “Heyyy I’m not on the clock.”  
“Touché.” Said Rumlow, the corner of his mouth pulling into a grin that he couldn’t hold back anymore. “You know,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Rollins did a pretty good job of telling you that we couldn’t have handled it very well overseas without you, but I still owe you a thank-you.”  
“Yuck.” Said Vivienne. “Where’s my S.O.? Some sappy-ass guy is in his seat and I have no idea who he is. Thank-yous are overrated.”  
“Hey.” Rumlow tilted his head to the side a little, letting her know that he was serious and that he wanted her to listen. “I mean it. I know it’s not gonna make up for what you did and the things me and the boys put you through, but let me buy you a drink.”  
Vivienne circled the rim of her very full shot glass with the tip of her finger. “You know I still have a drink.”  
“Then drink it with me and I’ll buy you another.”  
Vivienne couldn’t look away from him. The purplish glow from the lighting that lit the highlights and angles of his face, the way he leaned a little towards her, the fierce purpose in the hazel depths of his eyes, the way his lips were a little parted in the anticipation of her answer. Vivienne wondered fleetingly if she had been hit on by her S.O. The way he was looking at her suggested that maybe she had, but the tone of the conversation was harder to decipher.  
“Well,” she said, trying to conceal the blush that flared over her cheeks. “I’m not the kind of girl who turns down perfectly good alcohol. Especially If I’m not buying.”  
Rumlow didn’t lose his focus. “Good girl,” he said.   
Vivienne raised her shot and he met her glass with his own. The glasses made such a satisfying jingle when they met and the music paused as the DJ switched tracks. Vivienne didn’t have to strain to hear Rumlow when he murmured his part.   
“Another impromptu IQ test?”  
Vivienne wondered if he was talking about the alcohol anymore. “Something like that.”  
That smirk in response made the bitter alcohol so much more inviting.

The evening had flown by. Vivienne didn’t know what time it was, but she knew it was late. She and Rumlow had talked a little about meaningless work things, steering clear from any personal details because they were still in the midst of testing one another’s comfort levels. She was afraid occasionally that maybe she had said too much or smiled too much or something—the alcohol was making the room spin a little and everything poured from her lips too easily. She was glad that they had become distracted by a bout of drama between Cooper and a past flame that had happened to be in the crowd that night; she didn’t think she could trust herself if another shot was poured.  
She had excused herself about an hour before to call a cab, but she had since forgotten about it after becoming engrossed in a conversation with Rollins about what made Quentin Tarantino’s films so great. Rollins had loosened up under the influence of the continuous stream of amber liquid to his glass and Vivienne actually had a rather fulfilling conversation with him for the first time. After helping convince Cooper that he shouldn’t go after his old fling for her new number, Vivienne noticed that the evening had started to slow and the room relaxed to a more manageable amount of people. Most of the customers were milling around in the shadows, smoking cigarettes and texting into the wee hours.   
Vivienne got up from her bar stool finally and found her feet beneath her, thankful that she hadn’t had anything else to drink. She grabbed her purse from the bar and set a tip down away from the perspiration rings from her glasses.  
“You leaving?”  
Vivienne turned to Rumlow, who stood too. “Yeah. I probably should.”  
“You drive?”  
“No. I called a cab.”  
“Alright. Well let me walk you out so the boys that hang around the front don’t give you any guff.” Vivienne was about to object, but he held up a hand to quiet her before she could turn him down. “Hey. I know you can handle it, but just humor me, ok?”  
Vivienne waved and called goodbyeto Rollins, Cooper, and Crue before walking out of the bar with Rumlow following her.   
The air outside was cool and welcome after sitting within such close quarters to everybody inside. The sky was black, giving no indication as to what time it might be. Vivienne weaved her way past the few stragglers who gathered in wobbly groups around the door and looked around for her cab. The street was empty, save the orange glow of the streetlamps soaking into the dark pavement.   
She let her head fall back a little with annoyance. “Well I thought I called a cab.”  
“Back when you were on the phone?”  
Vivienne nodded. Rumlow looked at his watch.  
“You know that was a little over an hour ago.”  
Vivienne knew he was right, but she didn’t give up too easily. “Well…I’ll just call another one.”  
“Hey. Save yourself some money. SHIELD doesn’t pay us that much. I’ll drive you home.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Someone’s feeling very charitable tonight.”  
Rumlow nodded over his shoulder. “C’mon before you make me change my mind.”  
“Ohoho..ouch.”  
Rumlow’s ride was parked a little further up the alley amidst an endless strip of cars that lined a more residential section of the district. He tapped his key fob and the taillights flashed behind a glossy black Land Rover. Vivienne tried not to look too impressed, but she loved the Defender model and her enthusiasm for getting to ride in one was barely kept in check. She wondered if Rumlow’s comment about pay was directed only towards her; she knew she could never hope to afford the vehicle sitting by the curb in front of her. She opened the passenger side door when Rumlow unlocked it and she climbed in, looking up at the face of a very small apartment in the alleyspace beside them.   
“Did you park in somebody’s spot?”  
Rumlow turned the key in the ignition and looked up at the windows of the house. “Nah. This guy owes me.”  
Vivienne wondered what kind of story went with the remark, but Rumlow wasn’t spilling any details any time soon. He was too focused on turning down the music that poured from the speakers in his car. Opera. An unusual choice. Vivienne looked at him ad watched him until he looked back at her.  
“What.”  
“Tch. Nothing. Just trying to imagine you driving around listening to creepy James-Bond-villain music.”  
Rumlow raised an eyebrow and turned up the volume a little more. “It’s Pagliacci. Have some respect. It’s not creepy. I can still dump you on the curb.”  
Vivienne smirked and tugged a little at the top of her seat belt, trying to find something to occupy her time. She had already wasted all of her light conversational topics at the bar thinking that she might get off easy by escaping into a cab.   
“What’s your address?” Asked Rumlow after a tongue-tied silence.   
“I live off of Market Square on Henry Street.”  
“I know where Market Square is—not too far away.”  
Streetlights whisked by and orange stripes flitted over the hood of the car with their procession.   
“So…” Started Vivienne, uncomfortable with the silence that they had fallen back into. “Do you live around here, too?”  
“I have a flat on Sterling.” Said Rumlow. “It’s a bit deeper into DC. Nice place, though. Hard to find a good place in the inner city.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “My place sucks. A friend and I are working on fixing it up a little—remodeling the kitchen and such—but there’s a lot that still needs fixing. Water damage, pet damage, everything, really. Of course it still costs a pretty penny because it’s so close to everything, but I need to be close for work.”  
Rumlow nodded. “Understandable. Well, when you start advancing a little in your career and getting a few years under your belt, I’m sure the pretty pennies won’t be too much of an issue.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Yeah if I last that long.”  
“I’ve lasted this long. Hell, Henley’s lasted this long.”  
“Henley’s a dick. Somehow only the dicks manage to survive until they’re pooping themselves in adult diapers.”  
Rumlow chuckled. “You wanna live till you’re shitting yourself?”  
“Hah! No!” Laughed Vivienne. “I want someone to shoot me first.”  
“Be careful what you wish for.”  
“Eh,” said Vivienne. “I’m not worried about that yet. I’ve got my S.O. to watch my back.”  
“Hmh,” said Rumlow. “I’ve gotta watch my own back.”  
“Then do it.” Said Vivienne. “Somebody’s gotta be around to invite me out to shady bars and buy me drinks. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”  
Rumlow looked over at her and Vivienne suddenly felt like she had maybe plunged them back into a sea of awkwardness. She hoped that he would write off her remark as a tipsy comment.   
“I’m sure somebody else would buy you drinks,” said Rumlow slowly. “And as for me dying, I’m probably one of those ‘dicks’ who’ll be around putting down people for a long time. I don’t think you gotta worry about losing my number any time soon.”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks get hot. Maybe it was the alcohol, but she knew it wasn’t. She couldn’t look back at him for fear of making things much worse. At that moment, she decided that maybe listening to the classical music in Rumlow’s car wasn’t so bad after all.


	15. Hellbender Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Vivienne have a hard time being patient with eachother and Rumlow has a hard time being patient with the newest addition to the STRIKE team. Things are changing, but is it for the better, or are the changes making things worse? Clint gets huffy, Vivienne spills nasty coffee, and Rumlow acts a bitch, but gives a very motivational speech none of us knew he had the capacity to give.

“I don’t know, Clint, ok?”

It had been a little over a week since she had ditched her friend to hang out with the STRIKE team at their seedy bar. Every time she had tried to get in contact with him after that night and throughout the following week, he had been “busy” and maybe he had been, but Vivienne knew that even if that were the case, she still wasn’t going to hop back into their normal routines that easily. Clint didn’t really hold grudges—it was too much work to keep up with all of the people who disappointed him, apparently—but he did get a little touchy when past offenses were raised up into the light of the present. Of course Vivienne, who couldn’t help but to dredge up affronts no matter how ancient just for closure’s sake, was in the process of doing just that. Clint was getting short, but she wanted to get through it so that they could shift back into a normal friendship again.   
Vivienne had just gotten through telling Clint about the entire night—the strange bar, the drunk guy, Rumlow punching the drunk guy, the toast, Rumlow buying her drinks, and Rumlow driving her home. She had recounted the story in such a way that it seemed obvious that her S.O. had a thing for her, even if she didn’t know entirely what it was, and Clint had started shaking his head as soon as she began implying that there was something more underlying what a relationship between an SO and his charge should be between them. That started to frustrate Vivienne and it made her begin to lose her patience.   
Clint had just asked her what she intended to do about it if, indeed, Rumlow harbored a little more than just a workplace camaraderie with her.   
She had no idea.  
Clint shook his head still, even as he was turning to pick up their small tray of coffee that they had waited what seemed like hours for. Vivienne felt like she was going to maybe slap him, and that could possibly make her feel better, but then she’d have yet another behavior to apologize for.   
Instead she rolled her eyes and followed him back to a table a little further away from the usual coffee shop ruckus. They sat and Vivienne grabbed her coffee. They had spelled her name wrong. Again.   
She glared at the stupid mistake that was etched in sharpie into the side of her cup.   
“The guy’s worked here for a pretty long time—“ said Clint. “longer than me. He would know better than to break SHIELD codes of conduct. Superiors can’t associate with their subordinates—“ He narrowed his eyes and waved his hand, seemingly belittling Vivienne’s take on the situation. “—in the way you’re saying that he wants to, I mean.”  
Vivienne sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Would you chill, please? I’m just telling you what happened, no exaggerations. I’m not saying he has a crush on me.”  
“Even if he did,” said Clint. “He would be breaking the code of conduct that he and everyone else signed when they got here and you, if you ever ended up trying to act on some impulse, you would be breaking it, too.”  
“Act on some impulse,” Vivienne repeated. “Ok you can shut up now. I don’t want your opinion.”  
Clint looked at her. “Hey, look. I just don’t want you to get into trouble and I don’t think you know these guys like the rest of SHIELD does. I told you a long time ago and I keep telling you that they’re a bag of dicks and you should steer clear of their ‘members only’ bullshit. They’re not interested in your friendship—If this Rumlow guy is interested in you, you know he’s not setting out to win your heart with whispered words and longing looks. He’s not going to want anything above your belt loops—”  
“—Clint! Jesus. Shut the fuck up.” Vivienne didn’t even want her stupid coffee anymore. “And stop pretending like you know these guys better then me. I’m part of their team. What are you?”  
“Vi. I’m sorry,” Clint raised his hands in defeat. “I’m just saying. I’ve got a distanced view of them is all and sometimes when you’re as close up as you are…”  
“What? What, are you saying I’m blind?” Vivienne banged her coffee cup down onto the table and the boiling hot brew splashed out of the top of the cup and onto her hand. “UGH. Fucking coffee—“  
“Stop getting all upset and just listen for a second. You’re going to burn the shit outta yourself.” Clint passed Vivienne a napkin and she swiped it out of his hand. He paused before withdrawing his arm as if that might make her realize how silly it was to be fighting over what they were.   
Vivienne pushed back the hair that had fallen into her face, looking up at Clint coolly. “Alright. You have a minute before I leave you to your pouting, I suppose I owe you that much since I broke our apparently inflexible routine.”  
“Pouting? Really? OK, whatever. I’m going to ignore your remarks because I’d say asshat-ish stuff too if I had just dumped hot coffee on myself, but Vivienne,” said Clint, leaning across the table a little. “These guys make their livings on killing people, deceiving people, and taking orders, no matter what’s asked. If you think there’s room inside their terminator bodies for compassion, there’s not. Don’t do that to yourself.”  
Vivienne looked at him.   
He was waiting expectantly for her to say something, his eyes were chasing hers, urging her not to drag out their bickering. They had met for coffee—a common ground—over such a silly fix. It was nothing more than hurt feelings that fueled the unforeseen disbandment of their patience with eachother.   
“You know,” said Vivienne, jamming her coffee cup back into the paper tray`. “If it matters at all, he dropped me off at the curb beside my apartment. No plan to have his way with me, as you insist that’s what he wants, even though that would have been the perfect moment for it. He dropped. Me. Off.” Her cheeks were reddening. “I’m talking to you about this because you’re my friend—I’m asking that you listen, not chop my damn head off with your judgment. I’m a fucking big girl, Clint. I can handle myself. Stop attacking my team.”  
“I’m not saying you can’t—“  
“But you are—“  
“No, I’m saying that these guys—just don’t invest yourself so much—“  
Vivienne pushed her chair out from the table with an abrupt scrape that made a few heads turn in their direction. She yanked her purse off of the back of her chair and brushed off the front of her uniform. “You know what? You can sit here and drink your shit coffee, minus one. I hope that doesn’t throw too much of a wrench in the works for you.”  
She turned on her heel before she might have allowed herself to apologize, making a brisk beeline for the doors which she pushed open with a little too much force. She made her way across the Triskelion lobby; being early for work would be better then listening to Clint’s jealous bullshit. She felt horrible for having snapped at her best friend, but he had provoked her, hadn’t he? She didn’t care whether he had or not, she just wanted a minute to herself, but that proved to be too much to ask in her particular profession. 

 

In truth, her annoyance had only been growing as the past week had gone by. The men had kept true to Rollins’ toast, seemingly forgetting all of their amity they had practiced that night at the Split Keg, and had fallen, instead, back into their usual habits—the occasional snarky comment, a smattering of criticism, and the sporadic irritating bark from Rumlow. Vivienne felt like she was a fool for having thought that things might be any different.   
After leaving the coffee shop, she realized that the only real reason she had been so pissed at Clint was probably because he was right. It explained why she had defended every aspect of the team as a whole and it definitely explained the emotional investment when Rumlow’s intentions were brought into question. She struggled to maintain the representations of the men she chose to keep in her mind—the ones where they were laughing with her and valuing her contribution, but maybe they weren’t so perfect. She didn’t want to see them any other way, though. She preferred the world in which she was part of STRIKE, not just some lost dreamer wasting her life on some unattainable status.   
It all hurt her head.  
Vivienne stormed through the gym, ignoring whatever Rumlow was doing standing there with his tablet, ignoring Rollins and Cooper and whatever the fuck they were talking about now, and ignoring Henley’s stupid face because she was sure this time that she might hospitalize the motherfucker if he so much as looked at her the wrong way.   
She shoved the locker room door open and walked straight through to the back where her locker was. She missed the combination the first time and the second time on her lock. The third time was the charm, though and she finally was able to get ready for PT. 

 

“C’mon, Donahue. That’s not fast enough.”  
Vivienne’s ribs were killing her. She was running hard. Harder than she felt like she usually did. She quickened her pace the fraction her body would allow and continued on past where Rumlow was standing timing all of them and being an overall ass. Vivienne knew it was his way of pushing them and she knew he was picking at all of them and not just her, but that particular day wasn’t really a good day for his comments.  
She twisted a little, trying to take the pain out of her rib, but it just made it worse and whatever she had gained in momentum she lost immediately.   
She anticipated the call from across the gym, but it still made her blood boil. “Didn’t I say speed it up, Donahue?”  
Vivienne squeezed her eyes shut, propelling herself forward from a reservoir fed by her irritation that had begun spilling over.   
She finally completed her last lap and she doubled over at her mark line, clutching her barely healed ribcage. She could see Rumlow’s boots as he came over to her.   
“You good, Donahue?”  
“NNgghh. No.” Vivienne grimaced. Every breath drove pain into her chest, but she couldn’t help but to breath hard after running.  
“Well…I’ll give you five minutes.”  
How generous.   
Vivienne snorted, but Rumlow ignored her, walking back to give Cooper his time. 

The doors at the end of the gym opened and Vivienne looked up. They never had visitors—technically the STRIKE team wasn’t to be disturbed by interruptions. Ever. But this was different. What Vivienne saw made her forget entirely that her side hurt as much as it did and she straightened up and watched the two newcomers walk across the indoor track towards the team. 

Anyone who watched TV would know that the guy walking behind Nick Fury was Steve Rogers—the world renowned American Icon “Captain America”. Or at least, this guy was a really really good impersonator. Tall, blonde, broad-shouldered; hell, Vivienne was sure she could feel the atmosphere change with the guy’s presence. Of course she had read about him and she had probably had to write a paper on him during her years at the academy, but all of the sudden, she felt like none of that quite did him justice. There was something about the way he held himself that demanded respect—something about the way he took in everything, every little detail, much like Rumlow did, that told a person that he had seen a lot and had learned, over time, that nothing was to be taken for granted.   
Vivienne was a little mesmerized.   
Rumlow turned around and noticed the pair finally, and Vivienne was sure that, at first, he was as captivated as she was. It didn’t take him long to recover from his spell, though, and he set his tablet down on a nearby chair in anticipation of their arrival.  
“Agent Rumlow,” greeted Fury when he came close enough to talk comfortably.  
Rumlow inclined his head respectfully and clasped his wrist behind his back. “Sir.”  
Fury looked behind him at Rogers, who was busy looking over all of STRIKE. Vivienne held the supersoldier’s gaze when it rested on her. She only felt her muscles relax a little when he looked back at Rumlow.  
“I’m sure Cap here needs no introduction.” Continued Fury. “Cap, this is the SHIELD STRIKE team. They specialize in advanced recon, extraction, and undercover operations, spearheaded by Agent Brock Rumlow. He’s one of our best and he’s served SHIELD well throughout the duration of his career here.”  
Rogers offered his hand and Rumlow took it, giving the man a curt handshake.   
“Nice to meet you and thank you for your service,” said Rogers.  
Rumlow shook his head slightly. “No. Thank you. I’ve of course heard much about you.”  
Rogers smiled a little. “I’m sure. Only the good things, I hope.”  
Rumlow released Cap’s hand and nodded, folding his arms. “How could anyone ever talk about Captain America in a bad light?”  
“Well,” said Fury. “I’m glad we could get you two acquainted, but we didn’t just stop by to say hi. I wanted to let you know that Cap is going to be spending a good portion of his time offering his assistance to SHIELD wherever we see fit to place him. Considering his skill set, I feel like he might make an exceptional addition to the STRIKE team.”  
Rumlow nodded, rubbing his chin. Vivienne and anyone else who knew Rumlow knew that that the simple action hinted at how uncomfortable he was with an idea. His partner in conversation might have presented a new way to do something, a constructive criticism, or a simple suggestion. Rumlow would then either turn and walk away without further acknowledgement that there was actually a conversation being held, or he would cut down the suggestion until the person offering their opinion retreated. Vivienne wondered why he was reacting to the idea in such a way. If she were leading the team, she wouldn’t waste a breath before accepting Rogers into the ranks.  
“Oh really?” Said Rumlow. “Hm.”  
At least he hadn’t walked away.  
Fury looked a little taken aback with the lack of gusto in Rumlow’s response. “Not that you have much say in the matter, but I don’t see a problem with this arrangement. If there were, I’m sure you’d tell me.”  
Rumlow shifted the weight on his feet a little and looked evenly back at Steve Rogers, who had been watching the exchange and who now regarded Rumlow with a little more wariness. Where had the respect gone?  
“Oh, there’s no problem, Sir,” said Rumlow. “We would be glad to have the supersoldier on the team. There’s just a certain adjustment period we go through when you add people to STRIKE. There’s a fine balance between a person fitting and a person sticking out until eventually they get shot or stabbed or blown up or something else as glorious as that. It’s a messed up process, but it’s essential.”  
Vivienne couldn’t believe the words that were flowing so casually out of Rumlow’s mouth. Apparently, neither could Fury; the director’s gaze was hard and Vivienne wondered how it hadn’t drilled a hole through Rumlow’s face by now.   
“Either way,” continued Rumlow, taking advantage of the stunned silence. “The rest of my men have to adapt to the change, too, and that puts their lives at risk. I don’t want to lose a man I’ve worked beside for over a decade because of a careless mistake made by a guy I’ve only known for a month or two. I don’t mean to offend anybody, though. I’m sure Rogers would do fine.”  
“Indeed,” said Fury.   
Steve Rogers took a step forward. “If I may, I don’t want to intrude on your operation, Agent. I’m not trying to force myself on anybody. I just want to help where I can.”  
Rumlow nodded. “I understand.”  
“I’m sure you run a tight ship,” continued Rogers. “If I did have the opportunity to work with you and your men, I give you my word that I will do my best to prioritize your agents’ safety above everything else.”  
Rumlow pressed his lips together for a moment. Rogers stood almost a head taller than he did, but then again, Rogers was huge. Rumlow looked up into his face with a set jaw. “If the day comes, I’ll hold you to it.”  
Rogers nodded and both continued their unofficial stare-down until Fury took a step toward the direction from which they’d come.   
“We’ll leave you and these Agents to it, then,” said Fury. “I’ll email you more info once Rogers gets his tests through.”  
Rumlow inclined his head again, but he didn’t say anything. Fury accepted the gesture and turned around, making his way toward the door. Rogers nodded again at Rumlow.  
“Agent, it was good to meet you.”  
Rumlow smirked a little.   
Vivienne could detect a hint of sarcasm in his response when it came. “Likewise.”

 

It was late that night when Vivienne got home. Her bed felt so inviting when she fell back into it. The springs in her mattress bounced a little and then settled as she hauled herself across the center of it, looking up at the watermark over her head. She pushed her palms into her eyes, thinking about all of the shit that had gone down throughout the day. Part of her wished that she could do it over, maybe say something different to Clint that wouldn’t have held so much hostility and finality. She’d get to take in all of the weirdness that went down between Rumlow and Steve Rogers again—maybe the second time she might have picked up on something she missed the first time that triggered Rumlow’s stubbornness.   
The other part of her just wanted the day to be done. It had been long and she could have done a better job getting through it, but she didn’t want to do it over if she would still have to go through the same shit all over again.   
She closed her eyes and let her arms flop over her mattress. 

Vivienne didn’t remember falling asleep, but it took a long time for her to recognize her ringtone which slowly pulled her out of the depths of a deep REM doze. She awoke suddenly when she realized that her phone was ringing and her hand shot over her dresser to find where she had left it. She grabbed it and looked at the small screen.   
It was Hippie Shit.  
She swiped to answer and immediately pressed the phone to her ear.   
“Hello?” She said, her voice ragged with the sleep that still clung to it.  
“Hey.” Rumlow seemed more awake than she was. “A distress call just came in at an outpost overseas and we’re packing up and leaving in an hour. You need to get in here so we can leave—briefing will be en route.”  
“I—I—“ Vivienne pressed a palm to her forehead. “Ok. traffic shouldn’t be a problem since it’s like…” she looked at the clock. “…two o-clock in the morning…”  
“Good.”  
“Ok see you…”  
But Rumlow had already hung up. Vivienne groaned out loud.

 

 

The metal bucket-like seats in the belly of the SHIELD jet were definitely as uncomfortable as she remembered from her trip back from Russia. She thought maybe it had just been that she had been shot and broken and dislocated and that was what had twisted her ideas about how rough her ride back had been, but now she knew part of it was definitely the crappy seating. For how much money SHIELD put into their toys, one might think they could spare a few dollars for a cushion here and there. But Whatever.   
Rollins was sitting across from her. He looked half asleep and Vivienne was glad that she wasn’t the only one who was having a hard time getting up at this hour. She didn’t dare talk to him; she was pretty sure he would be far more dangerous and short-fused in the state that he was now compared to his usual demeanor, which was already touchy at best.   
They had just taken off and Vivienne still didn’t know the details about whatever it was they would be doing. Hell, she didn’t even know where they were going. She looked around at everyone else. Henley had put in earbuds to tune out Cooper, who was much more awake than Crue who sat on the other side of him. Vivienne couldn’t blame Henley even through she hated his guts; Cooper’s enthusiasm seemed way too abrupt and loud.   
Vivienne turned to see Rumlow sit down on the other side of her. There were plenty of other free seats across the aisle.  
He was activating the in-flight SHIELD web service on his tablet.   
“Can’t people have emergencies at two in the afternoon instead of two in the morning or is that asking too much?” Vivienne asked.   
Rumlow lifted a thermos of coffee from the other seat beside him and took a long draw from it. “I was up anyways,” he said after lowering his drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  
Vivienne looked at him. “How the hell did you have time to make coffee?”  
“like I said,” said Rumlow, setting down his tablet once it started the connection process. “I was up.”  
“Apparently.” Said Vivienne. She eyed his thermos jealously. “How long is this flight going to be?”  
“We’re flying half way around the world.”  
“Fuck. Why?”  
“Because. It’s what we’re getting paid to do.”  
Vivienne sighed, settling back into her chair a little more. She would have to find a comfortable way to sit in it, considering she wouldn’t be getting up any time soon. She looked across at Rollins, who had already nodded off into sleep. His usually marred brow was relaxed and the tightness of his jaw had slackened a little. She wondered what it was that he dreamed about.   
“So what have you got against Captain America?” she asked suddenly, taking advantage of their somewhat private atmosphere. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re less than fond of the guy even though he’s, like, a legend or whatever.”  
Rumlow sat back a little more, too. He twisted his thermos around between his palms. “I don’t have anything against Captain America. I do, however, wanna keep my team the size it is with only the people I have in it. It’s asking a little much for me to keep adapting to the wrench a new person throws into the works.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Well, thanks.”  
“It was easier to add you since Brady met his end right before you came on.” Said Rumlow, not entirely apologizing for his comment, but coming as close as he would allow himself to. “The team was still trying to adjust to an absence and you filled it, making it less of a loss. Not to mention Stars and Stripes just wouldn’t fit in. STRIKE needs people who are willing to wade through grime and bloody their hands. The guy’s a damn poster boy for purity.”  
“Hm. Why don’t you say what you really feel?” Vivienne said, chuckling a little.   
Rumlow looked down at his thermos. “But we’ll see how this all pans out. Fury seems dead set on Cap joining. I wonder how much of this the guy will be able to stomach before he decides maybe he doesn’t have what it takes.”  
Vivienne nodded, unsure as to whether or not even she had what it took to be a part of STRIKE.   
“You look tired,” said Rumlow, dropping the conversation about Captain America.  
“Oh,” said Vivienne. “You have no idea.”  
She felt like Rumlow was studying her and she felt a little self-conscious about how she could barely keep her eyelids open.   
“Well get some rest. We got hours to go and I don’t want you falling asleep on the job.”’  
Vivienne wanted to say something witty as usual, but she couldn’t think of anything. “Whatever”

 

Vivienne woke up to a hand shaking her shoulder. She startled into alertness, looking around to see Rollins looking back down at her.   
“Time for the briefing,” he said bluntly. “We’re a little over an hour out.”  
Vivienne stretched and yawned while Rollins turned back to where the men had gathered around the holoscreen. A couple of them had already started shrugging into their gear, pulling on holsters and zipping up their black Kevlar vests. Rumlow stood back behind the group, checking and loading his rifle. Vivienne felt like she had definitely slept too long. She pushed herself up and out of the metal seat and went back to where her gear was secured.   
“You were out like a rock,” said Rumlow.  
Vivienne pulled her fingers through her hair and opened her locker unit. “Yeah. Just tired, I guess. Had to wade through a lot of bullshit yesterday and I suppose some of it is bothering me more than it should.”  
Rumlow gave her a look.  
Vivienne caught it. “Not from you—well, I mean, you didn’t help the problem either, but it was mostly just some personal stuff.”  
Rumlow adjusted the earpiece that he had just put in and shook his head.   
Vivienne stopped what she was doing and looked at him for an explanation as to why the hell he looked disappointed with her. “What… Sir.”  
“If your personal problem gets one of us shot ‘cause you’re too caught up in it, it ain’t gonna be so personal anymore.”  
“It’s not.”  
“Ok.”   
Vivienne snorted. “First the sleep thing and now this, huh? Why are you on my ass about everything? I’m not gonna drop the ball, ok? Sir?”  
“Hey.” Rumlow had eased his tone a little, aware that she had taken offense. “Easy. I just want to make sure that when your feet touch the ground here your head is in the game. That’s all.”   
They looked at each other for a long time. Vivienne knew that he could see right through her, but he didn’t say anything else. She bit her bottom lip to keep herself from blurting something that she’d regret. All she needed was to jam another relationship’s head down the toilet.   
“Sir, we’ve hit the one hour mark.”   
That was Rollins. He had approached them slowly, adjusting the neck of his vest as he came closer.  
Rumlow finally broke eye contact with Vivienne and looked down at the floor. “Good. Give me a minute, would you, Jack?”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
Rollins went back to where the rest of the men stood and Vivienne waited for Rumlow to resume chewing her out for no reason. He toyed with his watch a little while he waited for the privacy he desired. Only when Rollins was out of earshot did he look back up at her. He held out his wrist.   
“Look at this,” he said. “It’s a watch, right? A fucking piece of metal.”  
He waited.   
Vivienne was lost. She didn’t know what he expected her to say, so she didn’t answer.  
“Back in Russia if it hadn’t been for this watch, I probably would have been dead.” Rumlow looked at her, pausing for emphasis. “You think that’s a pretty accurate statement?”  
Vivienne folded her arms. “I guess…yeah.”  
Rumlow squinted a little. “Really.”  
“I…probably? I dunno.”  
“C’mon, Donahue. Don’t be thick.”  
Vivienne scowled. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Would you just say what you mean?”  
“I mean you’re a hell of an agent and I’d pick you for my team ten times outta ten.” Rumlow had dropped his tone lower to ensure that they weren’t heard. Vivienne leaned in a little to make sure that she heard him. “I’m not the kind of guy who makes mistakes and trust me, if I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here.”   
Vivienne met his gaze, realizing that he was giving her a compliment.   
“I’m telling you,” Rumlow continued, “that I know you’re not gonna mess up, so stop acting like you’re five. You should know that I respect you enough to know that I don’t need to remind you of the weapon you are. But I’m a dog. I don’t make the decisions. I’ve got bosses, too. Some of them still aren’t keen on the idea of you being here.”  
Vivienne vaguely remembered what Fury had said about the red tape the first day she had walked into his office. “What do you mean?”  
Rumlow stepped back a little. “I mean that you gotta be better than the best if you want to stay. That means you do what I say, no questions asked. If you do that, there won’t be a problem.”  
Vivienne looked at him warily. “But I’ve been doing that the whole time, haven’t I?”  
“Yeah, “ said Rumlow. He tugged at the neck of his vest. “But I’m gonna ask you to do some things that are gonna be tough. But you need to know that these things need to happen.”  
Vivienne felt her face flush a little. “I—I can do that…”  
Rumlow smiled a little. “I know you can.” He lifted his wrist. “If you think this shitty piece of plastic and metal saved my life, think again, kid.”


	16. Hellbender Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, here it comes, the drama I've all been waiting for! Vivienne has always been fairly generous with her patience considering what an asshole Brock is, but finally her bubble has burst and it was all because of a mosquito! Well, sort of. Keep reading and unleash the much-awaited eruption!

The SHIELD facility was no more than a basement buried a little over twenty feet underneath what used to be a quaint pastry shop in Kampot, Cambodia. The street was quiet and the traffic low due to lack of interesting tourist attractions in that particular area. Slipping in and out of the facility without drawing unwanted attention had been a cakewalk. That had been fifteen years ago.   
When the distress call had been sent out, it had been sent from a basement with makeshift extensions running underneath a bustling market road. The SHIELD base was old and they were planning on contracting a new one to be built in a better location, but there was a dispute about whether or not Kampot would even be willing to house a SHIELD base within their city limits again. Something about conflicting interests.   
The facility’s security systems had shorted out while construction had been underway to extend the base’s bounds further. At first the shortage had been mistaken for an accident, but when the lights came back on and the men who had been sent to the generator remerged from the depths of the basement the machinery had been housed in, several of the agents were found dead, the rest had gone missing.   
Leads had been hard to find until shortly after STRIKE had already started their flight overseas. A small group of rogue Cambodian civilians calling themselves the Third Breath had claimed responsibility for the attack and that was all that had been reported. No reason, no further information on the base or the relationship with the civilians or what might have triggered such an outburst. All that Rumlow had said was that agents had been killed and there was a hostage situation that needed to be taken are of. Apparently the rest was need-to-know only. Vivienne felt that she had the right to know, but STRIKE’s operations overseas were still new to her and she didn’t want to test the system for fear of what Rumlow had told her about her permanence or lack thereof on the specialized force. 

Cambodia was hot. Immediately Vivienne felt the humidity sap the energy from her muscles as she walked down the ramp from the back of the SHIELD quinjet. She silently cursed whoever decided that STRIKE needed to wear black gear. Sure it was stealthy or whatever, but surely someone would have factored in that black was hot and absorbent. Not the best for climates that STRIKE apparently frequented.   
Night had just fallen upon Kampot and Vivienne could see a few of the city lights burning brightly past the thick foliage that they had landed in for cover. They were about five miles away—an easy trek.   
Intel had tracked the last video message the Third Breath had sent to SHIELD; They were held up in a building close to the city limits. The people were clearly amateurs and had no idea how to cloak their location. Vivienne wondered how the group had managed to get the best of SHIELD agents in the first place. 

“Fucking mosquitos,” Muttered Cooper. He was several paces ahead of Vivienne, chopping through the underbrush and trying to light a cigarette.   
“Shut up, Cooper,” Rumlow snapped. “And put the fucking light out.”  
“Yes, Sir,” said Cooper, his voice muffled a little past the cigarette he had managed to light.  
Vivienne saw him give Rollins the thumbs up. Rollins seemed less than amused.   
“Donahue, what’s our location?”  
Vivienne sighed. The men had deemed her the navigator so instead of flanking or leading, she was in the middle, walking through the patches of mosquitos and spiderwebs that the men had disturbed. She smacked a mosquito on her neck. “We’re good, but there’s a river ahead. The building’s on our side, so I’d suggest not crossing it. Are there crocodiles in Cambodia? I feel like there would be crocodiles here…”  
“Stick to your job, Donahue.”  
Vivienne head loll back a little in annoyance. “Uggh. I’m gonna get eaten by a fucking crocodile.”  
They came upon the river shortly after. The water was slow and shallow, so Rumlow opted to cross it rather than stick to their side and prolong their journey by thirty extra minutes. They walked through the water, splashing through tiny eddies that spun up fragments of reflected moonlight. Vivienne followed Rumlow, who was straight ahead of her. She was certain she saw a snake glide over the water’s surface, but she kept her mouth shut and squeezed her eyes closed for a moment to drown out her fear of whatever else could be lurking on the banks.   
They plunged into the jungle-like forest again, giving up their fresh air for the hot re-criculated atmosphere beneath the oppressive canopy. Vivienne looked down at her gps after a decent amount of time and then back up at the landmarks.   
“Closing,” She whispered, just loud enough for Rumlow to hear.  
Rumlow held up a hand and gestured for the others to slow their pace. He started to crouch as he walked forward, flicking the safety off of his rifle and bringing it up and back into his shoulder. Vivienne shoved the gps into one of her watertight pockets and hoisted her own rifle from where it was slung over her shoulder. She crouched, too, and brought her rifle up, doing a quick visual sweep of the foliage behind them to ensure that they had maintained their cover.   
They made their way stealthily to the tree line of the bank again and this time, rather than seeing more tangled forest across the river, they came upon a wooden structure that sat half over the river on wooden posts and half upon a small clearing.   
Vivienne crept up beside Rumlow. “Looks like this is it.”  
Rumlow looked through his scope, switching the setting to detect thermal signatures. He pointed it at the structure and it read the body heat of eight rogues on the bottom floor. The top floor yielded a red blob of closely packed figures in the middle of the room with four gunmen standing around them. One was at the window, but he couldn’t see them; at least the undergrowth was good for something.   
“Remember what I said,” breathed Rumlow, waiting for the man to walk back and join the others in the center of the room. “You know your job here. Hostage extraction. These people will say anything to keep their lives.”  
Vivienne watched the window. “I know.”  
“More is at stake here, just remember that.”  
Vivienne wondered why Rumlow was talking about it so much. It wasn’t like she had had any problems in South America or Russia. Maybe he was just concerned about keeping her on the team. He didn’t have to worry—she wasn’t planning on going anywhere. “I know. I plan on keeping my job, you know.”  
Rumlow teased his scope back to its original setting. “Good.”  
As soon as the man disappeared from the window, they started wading across the river again. Vivienne fell into step beside Crue, who was remarkably quiet for a big man.   
As soon as they reached the wooden posts, Vivienne felt the first surge of adrenaline pump through her body. This was how missions were supposed to go. They were a pack of wolves and they were the top predators in this scenario.   
The water pushed around her boots, eager for her to keep moving.   
Rumlow doled out several wordless gestures and Rollins, Crue, and Henley started to weave through the poles beneath the house, guns raised, moving to the other side of the building so that they could evenly comb the ground. Rumlow started up the bank on their side, pressing close to the wood paneling of the structure.   
They padded noiselessly underneath windows and avoided the light that spilled out from each one, moving forward and around the corner of the structure. Two guards stood out front, but Rumlow caught the closest by surprise, covering his mouth and keeping him in tight headlock while Rollins took out the other guard as he came around the other side of the house. Rumlow let go once the guard had stopped futilely grabbing his arm and the man slumped lifelessly at Rumlow’s feet. He stepped over him and proceeded toward the door. He looked back at Cooper and indicated the window on the second floor with a look. Cooper nodded, looked up, and then stared to back out into the blackness of the clearing. He turned, pointed at Henley, and then waded off into the tall thick grass in front of the house. Henley lowered his rifle and followed Cooper.  
Vivienne shadowed Rumlow to the door. He tried the handle slowly and found it unlocked. First the transmission, now the door—Vivienne wondered how these men had made it as long as they had, especially considering that they were supposed to be terrorists. Rumlow shook his head in disbelief, pushing the door gently. It swung noiselessly open.  
Vivienne crept through the front hall of the house behind Rumlow, careful to keep to the floor nearest to the wall to avoid whatever creaking she could. Rumlow slowed as they reached the end of the hall. He held up two fingers. Two men waited in the other room. Rumlow clenched his hand, the signal to wait.  
Vivienne lifted her rifle.   
Rumlow suddenly dropped his fist and took a knee forward, exposing himself enough to shoot the first guard. Vivienne leapt into her stance behind him, swinging her rifle around to drop the second. As soon as they let their bullets fly, shouts erupted from upstairs. Vivienne sidestepped to clear the next room behind her, but she came face-to-face with one of the aggressors, who kicked her rifle out of her grasp. She thought quickly, cutting away the pistol he had started to bring up with a rigid hand and unsheathing her bowie knife from its place on her other side in the same movement. When she brought the blade back up, she pushed him back into the wall and stopped short of cutting into her aggressor’s neck. She didn’t flinch when she heard the shout of the last man and the quick discharge from Rollins’ weapon which quieted him. The thump of bodies dropping from the floor above came right on time—Cooper and Henley were good shots.   
“Donahue.” The prompt was from Rumlow. It was sharp, almost like a warning.  
Vivienne had no idea why she had stopped. Obviously her aggressor didn’t either—her blade should have been through his throat by now and he only just realized that he still had a chance. He struggled, but Vivienne’s stance was secure and his struggles only sent a rivulet of blood sliding down Vivienne’s knife. Maybe it was the fact that it had never been so personal before. Every time she had killed a man up until the moment, it had been easy; she had been safe behind the barrel of her rifle.  
She was barely aware that Rumlow was starting in slowly behind her.   
“Donahue, why the fuck are you waiting? Put him down!”  
The man gasped, sweat beading over his brow. “You’re killers.” He said in broken English. “All killers.”  
Vivienne blinked, trying to find the courage to push the blade in. She was caught in his eyes—dark, weathered…and sad.   
“DONAHUE. NOW.”  
“My people—“  
“DONAHUE!”  
She felt Rumlow’s hand come down roughly on her shoulder, trying to push her away. She refused to let the moment end this way. She was weapon. She was better than this. She pushed back against Rumlow, denying him the opportunity to make her shame the way it would end.  
“You killed my—“  
But Vivienne’s blade cut through the man’s words with a deft, deep swipe. She felt every tendon through the handle of her knife, she saw the words he might have said bubble and gargle out of the clean incision in bright, bright red.   
He dropped to the floor.   
Rumlow’s voice was so distant, she didn’t know if he was even talking or if it was just her imagination filling in the words he would say “Jesus Fucking Christ.”  
Vivienne heard Rollins move up the stairs to secure the hostages. She was very aware of Rumlow watching her—she could picture the way his face was, surprised, disappointed, but her gaze rested on the man she had slain. She wondered if wolves ever felt anything like this.

 

Cooper and Henley had found a military truck back in the woods underneath a tarp which belonged to the late Third Breath. Rumlow gave the SHIELD hostages a GPS and instructed them on how to get to the location outside of Kampot where they would be picked up by a SHIELD Aftershock Squad. The Squad would then settle things with foreign affairs and correct damages, as well as clean up the mess STRIKE had left.   
The hostages had of course been grateful—none of them had been injured; a surprise considering the yarn the intel had woven about them which had led Vivienne to believe that surely the Third Breath would have been much more ruthless.   
Once the SHIELD hostages had finally filed into the giant military vehicle, Rumlow patted the back bumper and nodded at the driver, who started the truck. The black stench of old gasoline coughed into the night air and the engine gurgled to life.

Rumlow hadn’t spoken a word to Vivienne since before they had seized the hostages. Part of her wished that he would; she would prefer his reprimands to the silent treatment she was getting, but she also knew that even though she had carried through with killing that rogue, her hesitation and close failure to do so had made a much larger impression on her S.O.   
Vivienne still didn’t know what had caused her to pause—maybe it had been all of the build up and stress that Rumlow had unintentionally put on her when he had mentioned the instability of her place on the team. She had come so far. Much too far to lose her footing now.

As the military truck pulled out of the clearing and onto a dirt road that plunged back into the forest, Vivienne looked around to see Rollins leaning against the house, watching her. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. Rumlow stepped through the tall grass and eventually approached the swarthy agent. Vivienne watched their brief exchange, trying not to be obviously paying attention to them, but it was hard to look away when they both looked back at her. Vivienne hurriedly cast her gaze down at the dark patches of grass around her. She knew she must be the topic of conversation. The mission was finished. It had been a success. She didn’t see how her mistake had cost them anything other than time.  
When she looked back up, Rumlow had his head bowed and Rollins was looking at him as if waiting for an answer. Why wouldn’t he just address whatever the problem was with her? She shook her head in annoyance and looked up, studying the bands of stars that glittered in the heavens. She tried to let her uneasiness slip from her mind, but it was proving to be more difficult than she hoped.

 

STRIKE began their trek back through the forest. Vivienne didn’t care if the stupid mosquitos sucked all of the blood out of her or if she passed out with the lack of cool air beneath her heavy hot gear. She just wanted desperately for her S.O. to turn around and let her have it. She probably deserved it. She didn’t care if the other men had to hear. She was growing tired of Rumlow’s silence.  
Vivienne looked at the back of Rumlow’s head as he cut through the undergrowth ahead of her. Henley had been given the navigator job. Apparently ever her voice wasn’t welcome at the moment. She got irritated when she thought about it. How juvenile. Had she really done such a shitty job that they had been reduced so quickly to this?  
Now the mosquitos were starting to get on her nerves. She smacked them. Her neck was wet with sweat and her vest was chafing against her collarbone. She stopped and took her frustration at herself and her situation and Rumlow out on the motherfucking mosquitos.   
“Give me a fucking break--!”  
Her jet-lagged mind connected her anger to her leftover frustration with Clint from the day before and that made her think harder about Rumlow’s reaction to her failure to smoothly perform. Maybe Clint was right…But fuck that. Vivienne felt feverish in her annoyance. Rumlow had dropped her so quickly; that much was apparent in his lack of words. Maybe that said something about the depth of his interest in her.   
The STRIKE team had continued ahead, oblivious to Vivienne’s situation. Vivienne let a breath hiss out from between her teeth and she jogged a little to catch up to the men. She could feel the hard material of her vest cutting into her and her sweat caused her shirt to cling to her skin. Why did Rumlow switch it on and off like this? Sometimes he was actually nice to her and occasionally he was even understanding, but most of the time his patience was kept on a short choke chain and she was left to try to impress him over and over. She was sick of trying to prove her value.  
He was way ahead of her. They all were. The mosquitos seemed more interested in her once she had started to pick up speed and sweat more. She slapped them, her mind a useless muddle of irritation and spillage from numerous annoyances she had kept bottled up from past occasions. A mosquito flew right in her eye and that was the last straw.  
“HEY!” She yelled. “HEY would you STOP for one GODDAMN minute?”  
She dug fruitlessly into her eye, trying to get the stupid bug out of it. She could feel heat coming off of her in waves. “Jesus Christ!”  
The mosquitos were still swarming her and it only added to her resentment.   
She heard him coming before she saw him. Rumlow swiped a branch out of the way and made a beeline for her. He seemed huge in the dark.   
“Shut your fucking mouth, Donahue! You wanna get us killed??”  
Vivienne looked up at him, surprised that she had actually managed to elicit a response from him. She waved a hand at the humid jungle around them. “Do you see anyone around? I don’t. But I’m already getting eaten alive here, so I really don’t give a fuck.”  
Rumlow breathed hard through his nose “Stow your bullshit, Agent. You can bet we’ll sit down and have a nice talk when we get back to the jet.”  
“NO—No, let’s talk now,” said Vivienne, planting herself. She couldn’t stop. “That way you don’t have time to come up with some stupid metaphor to get me to think that I’m doing a good job when clearly we’re having issues here.”  
Vivienne saw Rumlow’s fists clench. He leaned over her, but Vivienne had had enough and she wasn’t perturbed by his ridiculous scare tactics.   
“Lose the tone NOW Donahue, or I’ll shut you up.”  
“You’ll shut me up?” Vivienne felt her cheeks flush. “SHUT ME UP, THEN. I’m sick of your stupid bullshit—all this build me up and knock me down crap—I’m trying to do this right, you ungrateful ass! You never give me a fucking chance!”  
Rumlow stepped closer. Vivienne could see the glint of his eyes from the moonlight that shone through the canopy and the creases on the bridge of his nose as he bared his teeth. “Oh, you have no fucking clue—“ He grabbed the front of her vest and yanked her forward until their noses were mere inches apart. “You’re calling me ungrateful? I’ve risked my fucking career for you and you have to go and screw everything up! You know how much pressure that puts on me? You don’t deserve all of the chances that I’ve given you!”  
Vivienne felt a fleck of saliva from his lips hit her cheek. He was so close and she could sense how pissed he was. It turned her stomach think that she had done something so wrong to provoke such a mood. She felt like she might cry, but she was too angry to let herself lose her ground. “This is my career, too.” She snapped, her throat raw. “If you think I’m not trying, then you’re not looking hard enough. I didn’t have to come back for you or anyone else in Russia! I could have left you there to die, but lo and behold the huge fucking disappointment shows up to rescue your helpless ass, you piece of shit!”  
She thought for sure Rumlow might snap her neck—it wouldn’t have surprised her—he was fully capable of doing it.   
“You’re incompetent,” growled Rumlow. “I was stupid to think you were worth it.”  
“Fuck you,” choked Vivienne. 

There was a bang  
A bullet zipped through the air between them, narrowly missing their noses and taking off the end of a lock of Vivienne’s hair that had been standing out with sweat. 

Rollins’ shout came through the trees “GET DOWN!” 

Vivienne instinctually looked in the direction the shot had come from, but Rumlow yanked her down as he dropped into a crouch. “Get down and shut the fuck up.” He snapped.  
Vivienne didn’t argue as she pulled her rifle strap off of her shoulder, swinging the barrel of her gun around and setting it back into the soft spot beneath her clavicle.   
They weren’t kept waiting.  
Bullets flew through the plantlife around them, pummeling into the trunks of the trees and punching through ferns and brush. Vivienne felt the air displaced by the barrage whistle past her arms.  
She took a breath, keeping track of the flashes in the dark canopy beyond. She flicked off her safety and let a burst of bullets loose, feeling the power of her weapon drive the stock back into her mostly healed bullet wound.   
Rumlow returned fire beside her and then grabbed her elbow, pulling her up. “C’mon.”  
They leapt forward and behind the cover of the thick trunks of several tall ancient trees. They were safe, but bullets pelted into the trunks on the other side.  
Rumlow touched his earpiece. “Rollins what’s your status?”  
“We’re at the bank. They’re above us.”  
“Are you covered?”  
“For now, but they have the advantage.”  
Vivienne looked across at Rumlow. The forest had suddenly fallen silent following a shout from their attackers and Vivienne could only assume that their aggressors were planning on flanking them. She covered her earpiece so that the men wouldn’t hear what she had to say.   
“They’re going to be torn apart. We have no idea how many guys are out there.”  
Rumlow covered his mic, too. “Shut up.”  
Vivienne watched his face. He looked away from her and a vein stood out in his temple as he forced his brain into overdrive to come up with something that might save their lives. It was his job. It was on him. But it really wasn’t.  
Vivienne felt the uneasiness in her gut clench again. It was all her fault.  
She tore her gaze away from Rumlow, wishing she hadn’t said some of the things she had. He was right, after all.  
She checked her rifle, swallowing the common sense that restrained her. “Fuck me,” she said.   
She stepped out of her cover and lifted her sights.  
“Donahue—!“  
Vivienne wrenched her arm out of Rumlow’s grasp as he leapt to pull her back. She went forward and past the trees, pummeling the surrounding area with a swathe of bullets. She didn’t stop. A spray of returning fire cut through the forest around her and she felt a slug slam into her vest, pushing her back a little. Vivienne recovered quickly, though, and spun in the direction the shots were coming from, pounding the underbrush with a response. She heard cries as her bullets found their targets, but she didn’t stop to find the fallen men. Instead, she charged through the foliage, gaining a dangerous level of confidence that was fueled by the adrenaline that pumped through her—the thrill of silencing her conscience and common sense.   
She had an advantage—the sheer stupidity of her plan or lack thereof—it caught her aggressors by surprise. When she heard a whisper or felt the brush as bullets flew past her, she returned with ruthless consequence. She was sure most of their bullets found their marks—a lot of them were lost, too, in the blindness of her rampage, but at least she knew the stunt was effective. She cut her way through the foliage, punching through ill-prepared groups of attackers and spraying the brush around them with blood that was hot and gleaming in the night.  
As Vivienne neared the bank, she heard the dreaded empty click of her gun. She was out of ammo. She rushed for the cover of a tree, crouching into the side of a huge leafy plant so that she wouldn’t be easily spotted, and dug hurriedly into her utility pockets on her vest. She heard a few short shouts, then silence again.   
Her hands were shaking—the act had begun to catch up to her and fear threatened to overtake the blundering confidence that she had instilled within herself. She was a weapon and she needed to finish the job. Everything depended on it.   
She found the sharp metal discs in a wallet-type sheath in her belt. She had only ever used throwing stars twice at the academy. She had given up the second time because of how shitty her aim had been and she hadn’t picked them up since.   
She mentally cursed herself and clutched her bowie knife in her other hand for closer combat situations.  
Vivienne squeezed her eyes shut, forcing back the bitter second-thoughts that she was having. All she could see in her head was the sheer anger and disappointment on Rumlow’s face and that was enough.   
She exhaled a shaky breath and leapt out of her hiding place. A huge man whirled around to where she had emerged and lifted a Sig Sauer. Vivienne kicked the gun out of his hand and turned deftly to intensify the strike from her bowie knife, but he caught her arm before her blade could pierce his chest. He tried to break her wrist, but the size ratio between them made it easier for Vivienne to avoid the action and she whirled under his arm instead, sinking a throwing star deep into his neck with her other hand. Not the way it was supposed to be used, but it was effective—hot blood streamed down her arm and she felt her aggressors muscles jerk before he let go. She pulled the throwing star out of his throat and let him fall back.   
She glided between the gnarled trunks of trees as she neared the bank, feeling mud suck at the soles of her boots. A man rushed at her from the shadows, but she dodged him, holding out her bowie knife so that his own momentum pushed the blade in to the hilt. She pulled it out of him and turned immediately when she heard a cry from behind her. A man was crashing through the plantlife toward her, gun raised. Vivienne released a throwing star and it buried itself into his shoulder.  
“Fuck.” She fumbled for another one as the man regained the footing that he had lost. She let the second fly and it sank into the man’s skull a little over his right eye. He shouted and fell a few meters from her. Almost too close.  
She didn’t bother to get the discs back—she still had two others she could use.  
Vivienne crouched a little and moved forward toward the river. She paused and listened. The chirruping of insects from earlier had completely died away and it was deathly silent. Suddenly, a shot rang out and that triggered a maelstrom of returning fire Vivienne ran toward the commotion, knowing that she wouldn’t be expected.   
Four men were crouched over a steep embankment that leaned out over the river. One man lay half in the water, motionless below them. Vivienne assumed that the rest of STRIKE was under the lip of the bank. Clearly the men who were pinning them down from above had sent someone to try to draw them out. They had tried only once and now that attempt was lying dead in the mud. It was a standoff.  
Vivienne moved silently through the brush towards the four men, trying to think of how she might be able to handle the situation. Her hand to hand was much better then her knife skills, but all four of the men had guns and she sorely lacked firepower.   
There wasn’t much of an option but to rush them with the element of surprise on her side.   
Vivienne ran forward and pushed the closest man over the edge of the embankment. The other three turned to her and the closest one held up his gun, Vivienne slit his wrist with her knife before he could pull the trigger and he dropped the weapon. The man behind him fired a shot, but the bullet only grazed Vivienne’s left shoulder and she pushed the first man back into the man who shot her, burying the bowie knife between his shoulderblades.   
The fourth man circled around the tangle of his comrades and came at Vivienne with his handgun raised. Vivienne had no cover.  
The man pulled the trigger with his gun pointed directly at Vivienne’s head, but a shallow click was all that came from the chamber. Vivienne took the moment to leap forward, push away his gun, and shove her blade upward into the man’s throat. Blood splattered over her face from her aggressor’s wound, something Vivienne didn’t anticipate. Vivienne closed her eyes and turned her head away, but as soon as she did, she felt a pair of hands grasp her waist and pull her back. The second man had untangled himself from his dead companion and now he held her, his grip painfully tight. He held his handgun to Vivienne’s temple   
“My gun is loaded, you SHIELD bitch.” He said into her ear. “Tell your buddies to come our, or I kill you.”  
“No.”  
“TELL THEM NOW OR I BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!!”  
There was a bang and the gun dropped from the man’s hand and he fell backward.   
Vivienne looked back.  
Rumlow came out of the shadows of the trees. His Glock was still raised.   
“Only I give Donahue orders,” he muttered. “And even then she only listens half the goddamn time.”  
Vivienne felt a little dizzy, but she maintained a solid composure. Rumlow walked up to her with a hastened, purposeful stride. He grabbed her arm and looked her in the eye.   
“Are you ok? Are you hurt?”  
Vivienne swallowed and shook her head, feeling her eyes begin to sting. Everything that had happened had started to sink in and it was just too much to register. Mostly it was the note of concern in Rumlow’s voice that was trying to push her over the edge.  
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Rumlow had started yelling again and Vivienne bit her lip. She had no answer. “Jesus, Donahue!”  
“Amen.” Rollins trudged up the more gradual side of the embankment with the rest of the STRIKE team in tow. He walked up to Vivienne and nodded at her, looking over at Rumlow. “Fuck Pierce. This girl is staying.”  
“Yeah,” said Rumlow, hoisting his rifle back in the strap over his shoulder. “Yeah, I know.”  
Vivienne felt her muscles begin to ache and her chest hurt where her vest had taken the bullet, but the exchange between her SO and Rollins made her efforts worth it. Beside the miraculous success of the act she had managed to pull off, Vivienne had also gotten the majority of her anger out of her system and she was sort of glad that she had let Rumlow bear the brunt of her yelling. Now she was just tired. All of her output, both anger and physical expenditure, had drained her of every fragment of energy that she had within her. Her gear felt so much heavier and the jet seemed a lot further away.  
After a brief exchange, the men had started walking again. Vivienne accepted that this was just what they did—they brushed off close encounters with the grim reaper and continued on their way like nothing had happened. She was still working on that skill .  
Rumlow had taken a step after the men, but he stopped himself before he could take another. He turned a little.  
“Hey.” He said.  
Vivienne had expected the awkwardness. “Hey.”  
“Look,” said Rumlow. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I’ve had a lot of shit riding on me, and it’s no excuse—“  
“It’s ok. I get it.”  
“No. No, you don’t.” Rumlow said sharply. “But I shouldn’t have acted like you did. I put way too much on your shoulders and you didn’t deserve that.”  
Vivienne waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. He just stood there.   
The nighttime insects had started to emerge again and the foliage hummed with their rythms.  
“Well,” said Vivienne slowly. “I’m probably not going to say sorry…”  
“I didn’t expect you to and I don’t want you to—“  
“But I think we’re even.”  
Rumlow finally looked her in the eye. Vivienne smiled a little and Rumlow nodded.   
“Ok.” He said. “Even.”


	17. Hellbender Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An awkward flight in the quinjet, a surprise vacay in Madrid, an unexpected look into the mind of Cooper, that cray cowboy. Apparently Rumlow and Donahue are even now, so what comes next...? Better get a fan it gets a little steamy...

The quinjet was quiet. They were a little over thirty minutes into their flight and no one had said much. The rest of their trek to the jet had been relatively uneventful and their takeoff had gone smoothly. Now everything was winding down and Rumlow was thinking about what he was going to put in his report.   
He sat forward, leaning his elbows on his knees.   
Vivienne was across from him. She was slumped in her seat, her head against her black duffle bag, her eyes closed as she slept.   
Brock gazed at her and through her as he thought about everything.  
He barely noticed when Rollins came to stand next to him.   
“What are you going to say?”  
Brock drew a long breath. “I don’t know.”  
Vivienne shifted a little in her sleep and several strands of short blonde hair fell down across her nose. Her lips parted a little, but she didn’t wake.  
After a minute, Brock stood up and started making his way a little further toward the back of the jet. Rollins took the hint and followed him out of the rest of the crew’s earshot.  
When they had created a sufficient distance, Brock turned back to his friend and shook his head, lowering his tone to a hushed mutter. “I couldn’t do it, Jack.”  
“I know.”  
“Fuck her—“ he put his hands behind his neck. “Why does she have to do this? She gets all caught up in these situations and I’m trying, Jack, I’m trying really hard to keep this kind of shit from happening.”  
Rollins watched him solemnly.  
“Jesus. It would all be a lot easier if I hadn’t missed that night in Russia…” Brock trailed off. He looked away from Rollins. “I’ve tried to steer her clear of knowing too much, but this is the fucking STRIKE team. We’re the hands of this thing. It’s fucking impossible.”  
“How much did she hear? What did the guy say? Does she have an idea?”  
“I don’t know,” said Brock, thinking back to the man behind Vivienne’s knife. “I fucked with the intel enough to make those guys look like terrorists. I told her they would say anything to keep their lives. She believed me.”  
Rollins shrugged. “Then she believed you. Why did you jump the gun?”  
Brock let a sigh hiss between his teeth. “I don’t know. If you knew how tight my leash is, maybe you’d have done the same. If she tells the wrong person the wrong thing, it’s on me. I’m not gonna be the guy that screws this all up. This operation has run smoothly for so long.”  
Rollins nodded.   
“I don’t think I could’ve done it anyways,” said Brock. “I couldn’t have pulled that trigger again—not after everything. I’m glad I didn’t.”  
He looked back over at Rollins and he knew that they were digging back into the foreign domain that they had barely touched that morning they had talked for a long time over black coffee and healing wounds. They had barely touched it, but somehow Brock had sensed that he had said too much because of the new way that Rollins had looked at him. That had been before they debriefed with Pierce. Pierce had been at Brock’s throat, but Brock had been thinking of how he had held Vivienne in the snow, waiting for the SHIELD lift, bleeding into the black fabric of her shirt, holding her close because it had been so cold.   
Rollins looked down at the floor, awkwardly unable to acknowledge the hint of sentiment that had descended into the conversation.   
“You’re right.” Said Brock abruptly, not wanting to draw out the silence any further. “I don’t think she knows anything.”

 

They landed in Spain several hours later. The jet had been low on fuel and they needed a place to stop before they flew the last leg of their flight to DC.   
Vivienne startled awake when the landing gear unfolded from the bottom of the jet. It had been a dreamless slumber, but it had kicked a little energy back into her and she was alert again.   
She stretched her legs and pulled the ache out of her muscles as she descended the ramp off of the back of the jet. She looked across at the private airstrip; sun shone brightly over the narrow asphalt runway and tall unkempt grass grew on either side of it. Bright blue flowers waved with the ripples of wind that passed through the dry meadow. It was beautiful. It had been a long time since Vivienne had breathed in air that was as pure as what filled her lungs as she yawned.  
They couldn’t land at international airports for the sake of keeping a low profile, so SHIELD had arranged a landing at a different location. Agents at the base near Madrid would meet them and supply them with a vehicle and whatever else they needed to wait out the jet’s maintenance. A separate crew would be brought in for fueling and repair to make sure they were in good shape before they crossed the Atlantic again.   
Vivienne began to push her fingers back through her hair, but it was matted with the dried blood that she couldn’t get out on the flight. She needed a shower.  
“So,” Rumlow came down the ramp behind her. He indicated the view. “What do you think?”  
“It’s nice.” Said Vivienne. “How long are we going to be here?”  
Rumlow stopped beside her, looking out over the countryside. “Well Cooper and I were just talking about this—the majority of the work should be done by eleven tonight—“  
“Gross—“  
“—But we were thinking of stretching the benefits a little and staying overnight. SHIELD would be paying and it would give us all a chance to relax and…”He looked at her hair. “Clean up…”  
“Hey. I know my hair looks like shit give me a break.” Said Vivienne, a laugh cutting into her words. “but I think staying overnight would be the bomb-diggity.”  
“The bomb diggity.” Rumlow shook his head. “Jesus, you’re one-of-a-kind.”  
Vivienne beamed. “Thanks. You’re just old.”  
Rumlow let his head loll back in annoyance, but Vivienne could tell that he was just embarrassed by the way he scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not that old.”

“Ok,” laughed Vivienne. “So you haven’t started pooping yourself.”  
“We’re not getting into that again,” said Rumlow. He couldn’t stop a hint of a chuckle from creeping into his words.   
He looked over at Vivienne and she smiled brightly back at him.   
“I’m kinda glad I yelled at you,” she said after dedicating a minute to the memory of their car ride. “Not because you deserved all of the stuff I said, but I’d rather spend this mini vacation thing not pissed at you.”  
“Yeah me too,” said Rumlow.   
“Really?” said Vivienne.  
“I said it, didn’t I?”   
Vivienne looked down, smiling at the asphalt she stood over and all of the sparkling little flecks across its face. When she had finally managed to wipe the embarrassed smile off of her face that would have surely given her away and looked up, Rumlow had already walked off and she was left alone to contemplate the warm buzzing that pinged throughout her body.

 

Two black suburbans rolled up to the airstrip a little over fifteen minutes later and Rumlow and Rollins went over to talk to the drivers.  
Vivienne watched them from the shade of scrubby tree that stood a little ways off from the tiny receiving building. She pulled up a couple of the blue flowers out of boredom and studied their velvety petals.   
“Whatcha doin’, girlie?”   
Vivienne looked up. Cooper was wading through the grass toward her.  
“Murdering innocent flowers.”  
Cooper grinned, nodding at her. “I thought as much.” He stood over her and Vivienne pushed herself to her feet, brushing off her pants. Cooper didn’t waste time pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He waved the box at her. “Smoke?”  
Vivienne shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t.”  
Cooper stuck one between his lips and cupped a hand over the end, flicking his lighter until the flame licked over the end. It was the first time Vivienne had noticed his lighter before. It had a rather feminine design on it—a faux lipstick print and “xoxo” over a black background. It was worn from frequent usage.  
“Nice lighter,” she said teasingly.  
Cooper didn’t choose to recognize her sarcasm. “Thanks. It’s not mine.”  
He took a long draw and exhaled through his nose. Vivienne wondered if he was going to say more. When he didn’t, she prodded him a little.  
“Well, so who’s is it?”  
“It belongs to my wife.”   
Vivienne looked at him flatly. He had never mentioned a wife before and all of the sudden she started to feel judgment well up inside of her. Cooper had never put a cap on his immorality when it came to women and Vivienne had never really thought much of it until that moment.   
She waited for him to look over at her so that her silence and expression might give him an idea of how unimpressed she was with his conduct.   
Cooper didn’t look. He gazed off across the grass. “What.”  
Vivienne snorted. “What about all those girls and the bars?”  
“What about them?”  
“Well—“Vivienne huffed a little. “Does your wife know?”  
Cooper pulled the cigarette from his lips and swung his arm down, exhaling as he turned to face Vivienne. “I dunno. She’s been dead for eight years, two months and seven days, so you tell me. You think she can see what I do from all the way up there?”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks immediately flush and she wished she hadn’t said anything. “I—I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”  
“No, it’s alright,” said Cooper. “You wanted to know and apparently I need to be more open and stop smoking, or so my ol’ doctor says.” He paused and looked down at his cigarette before putting it to his lips again. “I’m working on it.”  
Vivienne looked out at the field, too, trying to imagine Cooper with a wife.  
“Most of us had very different lives before this,” continued Cooper. “I think you’re the only coming in without a history. But don’t worry. That’ll change real fast. This work seeks out people who’ve had it pretty good and then all of the sudden you’re on your ass puking your guts out into a bathtub at three in the morning because your liver can’t take that much alcohol and you’re seeing faces you can’t forget…”   
Vivienne looked back at Cooper. His tone wasn’t threatening or even sympathetic. He was just talking like he might talk to her any other day. She wondered if those blue eyes, narrowed against the harsh brightness of the day, were seeing faces. She had no doubt that he was speaking from experience and it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up a little to think of his words as foreshadowing to whatever her story played out to be while she was on the team.  
“Thanks,” she said. She meant it.   
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I wish someone would have told me.”

 

Rollins handed Vivienne a suitcase as soon as she and Cooper walked back over to join the crew.   
“What’s this?”  
Rollins shrugged. “Street clothes, toothbrush, towel,” he looked at her hair. “Shampoo.”  
Vivienne tugged the suitcase the rest of the way out of his grip. “Alright, sassy-pants.”   
Rollins tossed Rumlow the keys to the suburban that the agents had left for them.   
“Let’s go.”

 

They reached the outskirts of Madrid as the sun started its descent into the latter hours of the afternoon. The golden-orange rays of light lit up the beautiful stone exterior of a fancy little countryside inn that they pulled up outside of. When Vivienne had thought of SHIELD spending money to lodge them for the night until they left the next morning, she had thought that surely they would be kept in some cheap motel with flickery fluorescent lights and sinks that didn’t work. The ivy that snaked up the side of the well-kept boardinghouse and around the thick, oiled oak front doors and the creamy while curtains that glowed from clean windows boasted of a much more impressive form of hospitality. Vivienne couldn’t look away from the striking beauty of the place. Nothing like that could be found in DC.   
A young host opened the door for them and greeted them with a bright smile. Rumlow handed the kid a crisp handful of bills and spoke a few words in the boy’s native tongue. They were admitted into the sanctuary immediately and Vivienne and the men were ushered into a cool wide hallway adorned with French doors which were opened to a bar on one side, and opened on the other into a large living room area with two magnificent fireplaces. At the end of the hall was a wide double staircase that led up to the guest rooms and between, double doors that led to a kitchen, which smelled of the beginnings of a rich dinner.   
Vivienne looked up at the ceiling, awestruck by how large the structure was inside versus how it appeared to be from the outside.   
“Your rooms,” said the boy when he reached the receiving counter. He handed them metal keys with numbers written on paper attached with string.   
Cooper had to elbow Vivienne to call her attention to the key being handed to her.   
Vivienne followed the men up the stairs, running her hand over the smooth, cool banister on her way up. The young man escorted the group and opened their doors for them.   
Vivienne followed the boy into a generously-sized room with a beautiful four-poster bed and a small dresser. The evening breeze caught the curtains through the window and they beckoned her into the space, admitting the scent of wildflowers from the hill outside.   
“Thank you,” she said to the boy. She had shielded her matted hair from him the whole time with a hat, sparing him from her condition.   
“Of course,” he said, nodding at her. He left her alone then, shutting the door behind him.

A shower had never felt so amazing. Vivienne didn’t dare to look down at the water that had already coursed over her until her hair was tangle-free.   
She washed her face, letting the water soak into her skin—it was extremely reviving.   
She thought about everything, as one usually does in the shower. She wondered how Clint was doing and if he had forgiven her yet—probably not. She thought about the mission, but not too much. Rumlow had advised her against it the last time and his words still lingered about moving on.   
Rumlow.  
Vivienne turned off the shower and stood for a minute, letting the beads of water run over her bare skin, smiling a little at the intimacy of their touch. She replayed the look in those hazel eyes over and over when he had fended off the terrorist who had been holding the cold barrel of the gun to her head. She felt the rush in her chest like she had when he had asked her if she was ok. The way his lips had moved and the way his touch ignited that thing inside of her—that annoyingly persistent tug at her heart.  
She was crazy.  
She swiped her towel from where she had set it atop the sink and she dried her hair and then wrapped it around her, running over to flop across the bed. She smiled a little, looking up at the ceiling. Creamy white molding with a flowery pattern adorned the circumference of the room above her head.   
Something had made Rumlow feel the need to keep her from getting shot while she had been screaming at him in the forest. If it wasn’t what she thought it was, then she doubted that she would have made it unscathed.   
Vivienne twirled a strand of her wet hair around her finger, playing with it as a smile crept over her lips. She looked across at the pillow next to hers. The pillowcase was clean and white and it smelled like the fresh air that circulated throughout her room. She closed her eyes and imagined.  
Her phone buzzed on the dresser and she hopped up to check it, but it was just a data notification. She rolled her eyes.  
Vivienne went to her suitcase where she had left it sitting on the dresser and she opened it, somewhat curious about the clothing she had been given.  
She unfolded an oversized “Visit Madrid” shirt and pulled a pair of black exercise shorts from the stack of items within. She raised an eyebrow. This was what she got when a bunch of men were told to find casual clothes for a woman. “Nice,” she said sarcastically. She rummaged further through the contents and found a ridiculously lacy short black nightdress and about ten pairs of socks. She only unearthed one pair of underwear. Somebody had forgotten or was too embarrassed to buy a bra. She rolled her eyes and donned the t-shirt and the shorts, knowing that she probably looked ridiculous. She ruffled a hand through her wet hair to try to release more of the water from the heavy longer strands, but her hair was thick and it wasn’t going to dry for a while.   
She sighed and snatched her key from the dresser, heading out the door to see who else was up and about. 

 

Brock took a long, slow draw from his beer. He was alone at the bar. Cooper had been there with him a couple of minutes ago, but then he had opted instead to go out into the evening for a walk. Rollins had kept them company for the first couple minutes, but he hadn’t showered yet, so he had disappeared upstairs to clean up. Crue and Henley were in the room across the hall—apparently they had found a pool table and bets had already been taken.  
And so Rumlow sat alone. He didn’t resent the solitude. Sometimes he needed it.  
The window at the far corner of the bar was open and it let in a soft Spanish breeze, which carried the faint fragrance of early summer blossoms. He ran his finger over the rim of his beer stein, unconsciously reliving other such nights in different locations. Their unintentional arrival in Spain was a blessing. He had wanted to come back since the first time several years ago and now old memories flooded back to him. He smiled at one of them—a long forgotten inside joke he struggled to remember.  
“Wow. I should have had my phone with me so I could take a picture.”  
Brock looked over his shoulder, feeling a little embarrassed at having been caught in a bout of nostalgia.   
Vivienne walked into the bar. Her hair was wet from showering and she seemed to glow in the dim lighting in the room.  
“What?”  
Vivienne snorted. “You were smiling and it was kinda dorky, but I left my phone in my room, so unfortunately the moment’s come and gone.” She pulled up a chair beside him and the bartender appeared from the back of the kitchen. Immediately he seemed captivated by her presence and Brock wondered fleetingly who wouldn’t be.   
Vivienne looked back at the bartender with a bewitching smile. “Hey.”  
The bartender looked like he might melt.   
“Do you have Hennessey?”  
He nodded.  
Vivienne chewed on her lip. “A shot of that.” She turned back to Brock. “What prompted the smile?”  
Brock shrugged and took a pull from his beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “None of your business.”  
Vivienne smirked. “Fine.”   
Brock read the print on Vivienne’s shirt. “Nice shirt,” he chuckled sarcastically. “Where’d you get that?”  
Vivienne pulled at the hem of her shirt, stretching it so that Brock could see the entirety of the Matador and the bull emblazoned on the front of it. “Um,” she said, theatrically pretending to think. “None of your business.”  
Brock shook his head and the bartender passed Vivienne a shot glass filled to the brim with whiskey. She brought it up and tossed it back with a grimace. She licked her lips and set the empty glass on the counter, looking around the room. “So where’s everyone else? I noticed Crue and Henley are in the other room…”  
“Rollins went to clean up and Cooper’s gone for a walk.”  
Vivienne nodded. “Hm.”  
Brock watched her as she leaned her elbow on the counter, placing her chin in her palm. He liked the look she always had on her face when she was studying things. She folded her bottom lip in a bit and looked down her nose at whatever caught her attention. She looked back up at him and he realized that he had been caught studying her. He willed himself not to blush.  
“So,” she said, nodding at the bar. “If I win an arm-wrestling match against you, will you buy me another?”  
Brock snorted. “Another shot?”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “What else? The STRIKE team owes we—I just now got all the blood out of my hair.”  
The hint of a smile pulled at the corner of Brock’s mouth. He set his beer down and turned to face her squarely. “I don’t think you’re gonna get compensation by losing an arm-wrestling match against me.”   
Vivienne seemed a little taken aback by his retort. “Ooh someone’s getting cocky and he hasn’t even dared try to take me yet.” She lifted her chin off of her palm and held out her hand to him. He took it and Vivienne smiled. “You have big hands.”  
Brock leaned a little, pretending that it might be harder than he knew it would be for her sake. “You ready?”  
Vivienne looked up at him, her eyes wide in anticipation “Yes!” she said, getting a head start. It didn’t take Brock long to regain the little that he had lost, and thought Vivienne gritted her teeth and squeezed his hand with the force she was trying to match, her knuckles hit the counter before she could gain anything back. She cried out in mock bewilderment. “Oh come on!”  
Brock smiled. “It was a nice try, kid. If you put as much effort into that as you put into annoying me, maybe you would have won.”  
Vivienne frowned. “Hey…”  
“I’m kidding.”  
“Tch. I didn’t know you did that.” Vivienne looked longingly at her empty shot glass.   
Brock saw her look and gave in, tapping the counter for the bartender to pour her another shot. “Why would you even bother with making it an arm-wrestling match?” He asked, “You’re smart enough to know you wouldn’t win that.”  
Vivienne shrugged, giving him a sideways smile. Her green eyes were a thousand shades in the half light. They were like the desert. “I dunno,” she said. “It was fun, wasn’t it? Plus you held my hand. It was kinda nice.”  
Brock caught a glimmer of something in her eyes and it started a slow burn somewhere deep in his chest. “’Nice’ doesn’t really say much about a person, though, does it?”  
Vivienne retrieved her new shot glass and started playing with it. “No. If I had to describe you, ‘nice’ is not really the word I’d use.” She looked back at him with a sly smile across her lips. “Hands don’t lie, though, Brock Rumlow, they actually tell a lot about a person…How does it feel that I know the kind of person you are?”  
Brock wondered why a chill raced up his spine. Maybe it was the way her voice had dropped a little and it was the kind of quiet coo that lovers spoke to each other with. He unconsciously leaned a little closer to her. Her irises were magnetic and her words slipped so enticingly from her lips.   
The sun had started throwing its last rays in an attempt to stay afloat above the horizon and the barkeep lit a few candles down the length of the bar.  
“I would hope you wouldn’t know everything,” he murmured.  
Vivienne searched the depths of his eyes. “I don’t have to.”  
Brock took every detail of her face in, the little creases at the corners or her eyes, the smooth procession of perfection and imperfection from her cheekbones to her parted lips. He looked up at her hair and saw two little red strands standing out amongst the rest of the shimmering bright blonde. He touched them, liking the way that goose bumps ran along her arms when he did  
“You didn’t get all the blood.”  
“Looks like you still owe me then.”  
“Do I?”  
Vivienne smiled again, but Brock knew she was wary of his interest that he couldn’t restrain and the smile was an attempt to breach the surface of this deep and very suddenly cresting infatuation between them.   
Vivienne brought her second shot to her lips, but she took it slowly. When she set it down, she looked down her nose at him, exposing the pretty bend of her neck. Brock held back the sudden urge to lean into her and bite the soft spot right under the back curve of her jaw. He abruptly felt drugged by her presence and he knew by the way she tilted her head a little to the side that she was daring him to do something.   
He couldn’t help himself. His head was underwater now.

Vivienne was so engrossed in the inviting way Brock’s mouth was hanging open a little that she barely noticed his fingers as they trailed down her neck. When they reached her collarbone, she smiled and pulled away.   
“Easy, Tiger.” She said. She knew how to play this game and if they were going to play it, she wasn’t going to fold her hand that easily. She hopped off the barstool, but she took a step closer to him, lightly touching his shoulder. “Now I’m gonna go upstairs because I’m all done drinking,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. “And I’m gonna go to my room and take off these clothes. But I like you, so it would be rude for me not to extend the invitation.”  
She smiled when Brock closed his eyes and inhaled.   
“Just make sure I get your RSVP.”   
Vivienne pulled back away from him and she walked through the bar and back out the double doors. When she reached the hall, she jogged up the staircase, the reality of what she had just done crashing over her with clarity. How had she not thought this clearly back in the bar? She could have played a much more subtle card.  
Her cheeks flushed and she went to her room, wiggling the key in the keyhole.  
She heard the door beside hers open and she looked over to see Rollins emerge, his hair wet from showering.   
“Hey,” she said distractedly.   
He looked at her warily. “Hey.”  
She was glad when he finally turned the corner and started to descend the staircase.   
Her door finally opened and she rushed inside, pulling her wet towel off of her bed and grabbing her stupid suitcase off of the dresser. She yanked the black nightdress out of the case and pulled her t-shirt off in the process. She shimmied out of her shorts and donned the silky little black slip. It didn’t look as bad as she thought it would, but it wasn’t something she would normally wear to bed.   
She walked across to her bathroom and grabbed the stick of deodorant, applying it generously to her armpits. Too generously. She grabbed a washcloth from the little shelf in the bathroom and wiped some of it off. Thank God she had shaved before the trip.   
She heard a knock on her door.  
Vivienne’s heart felt like it would beat out of her chest. She was fumbling to put away her washcloth where it wouldn’t look so obvious. “Um—“  
The door opened and Vivienne threw the washcloth into the shower. She whirled around to see Rumlow closing the bedroom door across the room and she walked out of the bathroom. Rumlow turned around and looked at her.   
“Hey,” said Vivienne. She watched his eyes as they ran over her.  
“Hey.”  
She took a step forward and Rumlow took her movement as his cue to start slowly across the room toward her.   
“So downstairs…” said Vivienne, feeling her cheeks begin to flush a little. “I didn’t mean to be so…y’know…”  
Rumlow raised his eyebrows. He tilted his head a little to the side. “Yeah, you did.” he countered.  
“I guess you’re right,” said Vivienne, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from smiling. “I did.”  
She looked up at him. He stood directly in front of her now—if Vivienne didn’t know that his intentions were amorous, she might have pegged the closeness as intimidation.   
“It’s ok,” said Rumlow. He touched one of the straps across Vivienne’s shoulder. “I liked it.”  
Vivienne felt goosebumps race over her skin when the tip of his finger brushed her neck. She closed her eyes. His fingers went through her hair.  
“You’re one helluva girl,” said Rumlow. “I’m gonna have a hard time restraining myself.”  
Vivienne smirked. “Oh please. I think I can handle it.” She looked back at him, but he was looking down at her lips.   
“I know you can.”  
Vivienne felt breathless.  
He finally pulled her to him, pressing his lips to hers with heated passion. The kiss hit her nerves like a punch might, coursing through her system and sending tendrils of adrenaline shooting throughout her body. Vivienne complied with the sheer lust that was evident in the way he grabbed her waist and she pushed her hands up over his chest, past his ears, and into his hair. His eagerness thrilled her and sent chills down her spine and she let him know her intent with a playful tug at his bottom lip between her teeth. The sensation seemed to fuel Rumlow’s passion and he kissed her harder, pulling her to him, against him. His hand ran up her back and then down again, lower than it had gone the first time.  
His lips had left hers and now they trailed over her neck, soft around her throat and hard between his teeth over her shoulder. Vivienne caught sight of them in the vanity mirror across the room and it solidified the reality of the situation a little more. She had been having a hard time believing that this was even happening until she saw the very real pull of his muscles underneath the back of his shirt that coincided with his lusty touches. Rumlow caught the soft skin just behind her jaw between his teeth and Vivienne’s lips parted in pleasure and she let out a groan while pressing the tips of her fingers into his back. He was pulling her back into the game.   
Suddenly Rumlow let go of her and he locked his eyes on hers, his lips so close that she could feel his breath.   
“Vivienne.” It was a sigh.  
“Yeah?”  
He finally looked down at her body—at her skin that still shuddered with the craving of his touch. He reached down, his fingers curling around the hem of her dress. “Let’s take this off.”  
“Ok.” Vivienne watched him kneel before her and she felt her breath catch in her throat when his warm palm pressed against her thigh and she felt his lips soft against her leg. He pushed the garment up slowly, following the path of his hand with a lazy trail of kisses. His touch was electric. He finally tossed the silky lingerie aside and stood looking down at her, his jaw slack.  
Vivienne stepped to him and pulled his shirt over his head. She took in all of the scars she knew were there with a new appreciation and slowly followed them up his neck and back to his eyes. Their hazel depths had followed her gaze and now they begged for her touch again. Vivienne complied, splaying her fingers over his cheeks and into his hair and kissing him zealously. She tried not to break their kiss when she felt his calloused palms push over her breasts; the way he followed her curves with his fingers made her want to melt into his hands.   
They moved slowly toward the bed and Vivienne reluctantly took a step back. But Rumlow wouldn’t be deterred, and even though her action had been necessary to follow through with the evening, he closed the space again. Vivienne pushed her hands between them, finding the hem of Rumlow’s pants. She looked back up at him while she undid his belt.   
He gave her a knowing smirk and pushed his hand down over her abdomen, slowing as the tips of his fingers went over her pelvis. He didn’t break eye contact with her as he slipped his middle finger up into her. Vivienne groaned a little, unable to keep quiet by the way he had started a rhythmic pressure inside of her. She knew he must have been enjoying it too—he mimicked her facial expression as he pushed her further into a pleasure high.   
“Somebody’s wet for me,” he crooned.  
Vivienne undid the button on his pants and pulled down his zipper. Maybe it was going too slowly for Rumlow, or maybe his patience had snapped with his eagerness for their next level of intimacy—he pushed off his own clothing and shoved Vivienne backward onto the bed. Vivienne propped herself up on her elbows, taking in every little detail of him—the hard muscle in his abdomen and chest, the little veins that stood out in his arms, the scars, the imperfections, the perfections…  
Rumlow followed her gaze with a crooked smile. “Hmm…” he murmured as he came to the side of the bed. “I’ve wanted to do this for a while.”  
“So have I.”  
“Mmm.” Rumlow pushed a palm over the inside of one of her legs.  
“So is this your official RSVP?”  
“Mhm.”  
“I don’t think you’re making it clear enough,” Vivienne whispered.  
Rumlow pushed aside her other leg.   
“I mean—for God’s sake. Try to look excited.” Vivienne was trying to be witty, but it was for her own pleasure. Clearly Rumlow wasn’t listening. “If you want to come to the party and eat the cake, you have to—“  
Rumlow grabbed her legs and pulled her abruptly to the edge of the bed. He rammed his fingers back into her, coaxing her body into readiness. “Shut up.”  
Vivienne barely had time to take a breath before he pushed the length of his cock into her. Vivienne gasped, grabbing the bed sheets in clenched fists to compensate for the sudden intimate pressure. “Uhnnnohmygodd.”  
Her mouth hung open and he pushed into her again, grabbing her waist for better leverage. Vivienne gazed up at him, the look of elation on his face driving her further into her own ecstasy. They moved with desperate intoxication with one another, harder, faster, pushing each other. They were only barely conscientious about each other’s comfort for fear of the indomitable feeling that burned within them suddenly disappearing. They pushed back further onto the bed and immersed themselves in one another—for once, everything could be forgotten and they became lost entirely to the world that lay outside the door. However, everything was done only for the moment; the lifespan of the passion exchanged wasn’t intended to last a minute more than it needed to. They had each other for the night. That was all either of them wanted.

 

Cooper kicked the heel of his boot against the stone exterior of the inn, trying to be considerate enough not to track a bunch of grit and grime into the immaculate hall past the door. The sun had since set and he had watched the rolling meadow side change its colors as dusk began to fall on his way back from his walk. He had needed a breather; hell, sometimes everything just got a little too suffocating and he didn’t know which way was up. It helped to be alone and separate himself sometimes from all of his crushing reality.   
The guys had given him shit about his pursuit of solitude at first, but maybe they eventually understood, because they didn’t say anything about it anymore.   
He didn’t care whether they ignored it or not. It wasn’t their business, so why get stirred up about it?   
He just missed his wife.  
Cooper tilted his head back and stretched his arms, pulling the amassed tenseness out of his muscles.   
He hadn’t thought about it for a while, and it had been a good thing. She distracted him and he couldn’t afford to let her get to him while he was working. She had always had a way of screwing everything up and it seemed like she didn’t want to give up too easily on her habits even after he had buried her.   
The idea that she was still a part of his everything always made it a little harder to breathe when he was thinking about it. The doctor had said that it was healthy to dedicate a little time to think about her, but that it just wasn’t right to find her again at the bottom of a fifth of whiskey every night. He had mostly listened, but he hadn’t made that old man any promises. What did the old fuck know anyways?  
Cooper opened the door to the inn and stepped into the front hall. The smell of a rich dinner filled the place and curled over him as he closed the door behind him and started toward the bar. Rumlow had mentioned something earlier to him about a really old bottle of bourbon that stood gleaming proudly on the shelf behind the counter when he and Rollins had accompanied their boss to the liquor room. Rumlow had nodded at it and proposed something about breaking the seal that had no doubt started to collect dust. Cooper wasn’t as interested then as he was after his walk and as he went to the French doors that opened to the bar, he rubbed his chest in anticipation of the burn that the old liquor would bring. He needed that life fire in him.   
When he went into the room, however, only Rollins sat at the counter.   
Rollins looked over his shoulder at him when he came closer.  
Cooper spread his arms. “What the fuck. Did Brock pussy out?”  
Rollins shrugged. “Depends.”  
“Depends…” Cooper sat down. “Don’t be so mysterious, Rollins. Talk straight. We ain’t in no romance novel here.”  
Rollins ran a hand over his mouth—a telltale sign that he was trying to restrain a smile. “Don’t be too sure.”  
“What the hell do you mean?”  
Rollins pushed a filled shot glass over to Cooper. The shot wasn’t the expensive stuff Brock had taunted him with. It was colorless and straightforward—no hints of exotic flavors. It may as well have been everclear. That was the shit that Rollins drank.   
“I mean Brock’s a little preoccupied.” Said Rollins.   
Cooper lifted the shot to his lips, raising an eyebrow as an invitation for Rollins to continue.  
“Like it’s full on ‘Nine and a half weeks’ up there with Donahue.”  
Cooper almost choked on his drink. He had held the liquor in his mouth way too long in order to prevent it from happening, and now he grimaced at the sour flavor or lack thereof. “What?” he said. “What the fuck did I miss? They were just at each other’s throats in Cambodia.”  
“Yeah.” Rollins tipped back his own shot without any indication on his face of the bitter nature of his drink. “Well I’m sure throats are still involved.”  
Cooper squinted, trying to make sense of what he had heard. It dawned on him that maybe the situation was understandable and only then did he catch on to everything Rollins had just said. He started to laugh and only increased his volume until his sides hurt. He slapped Rollins on the back and Rollins chuckled a little, too.   
“Well, I’ll be fucked sideways,” said Cooper. “Its about fucking time Brock wrangled some pussy. Even if she is a lot hotter than him and she could pretty much be his daughter with the age gap and all… Damn, Jack. I suddenly feel outdone. You have to pay the pretty girls at the Keg, so they don’t count.”  
Rollins grinned and rubbed his chin. “No, they don’t.”  
“How’d he do that?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Fuck, man.”  
“I know.”  
Cooper shook his head to himself. Rollins tapped the counter for another round to be poured.   
“Hey,” said Rollins when he got another drink. “We aren’t telling Pierce about this, understood?”  
“Yeah, Jack.”  
“Good.” Rollins looked into his shot. “Brock doesn’t get attached, so it’s not gonna be a problem for him to cut things if he needs to, but Pierce doesn’t know that. He wants zero variability in the endgame and to him Donahue’s a pretty significant variable. I’m not gonna throw Brock under the bus here.”  
Cooper held up his hands. “Hey. I say let the guy have his fun. My lips are sealed. I already know the guy’s got the guts to put a bullet in the back of her head if he needs to yet. Donahue’s a hoot, though. It’d be a shame to see her go.”  
“Yeah,” said Rollins. “Yeah, it would.”


	18. Hellbender Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure Vivienne feels very much like she's caught on a crazy-ass merry-go-round right now, but that's the way it rolls after a night like that. What did she expect?   
> Clint is a friend again, Rollins gets shot down with Rumlow angst, Rumlow can't write his damn report, and Fury addresses Pierce's twitchiness about Steve Rogers.

The alarm was piercing and Vivienne inhaled deeply, shifting out of the position her body had contorted itself into during sleep. She heard a deep breath being taken behind her and felt an arm flex into waking mobility under her neck and that’s when she remembered. The arm slid out from beneath her and Vivienne held her breath tensely while Brock reset the alarm on his watch. She waited, gazing across the room at the windows and the dawn that threatened to blush through the creamy curtains.   
Maybe Brock was waiting, too.  
Brock slid his palm over her waist. The shock from the real warmth of it sent a shiver down Vivienne’s spine.  
Vivienne squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself into her usual persona—the one that had a response ready for anything. She cautiously stretched a little, letting Brock know she was awake, before she turned over to accept that the night before had indeed been real.   
“Hey,” said Brock.  
“Hey,” said Vivienne.   
They looked at each other. Brock looked tired—Vivienne could only assume that she looked no better—but he still looked like her S.O., which was funny because after Vivienne had prepared herself for some dramatic change. It didn’t make sense that he would be any different, but the previous night had definitely shaken up her perception of him and she didn’t really know what to expect next. Vivienne smirked a little at his mussed hair.  
“What time is it?” she asked.   
Brock looked at his watch. “Quarter past six.”  
“Uuugh.” Vivienne said. “Why didn’t you just shut your alarm off before you went to bed?”  
Brock met her eyes again. “I was in the middle of something.”  
Vivienne couldn’t look away. “Oh, yeah…”   
The sun came up outside and sunlight shot through the cracks in the curtains. Birds had begun to stir in the meadow beyond their window.  
Vivienne couldn’t find anything else to say, so she decided to leave the awkward silence and situation for Brock to fix. She pushed herself up off of the mattress and swung her legs over the side of the bed, hopping out from beneath the covers. She had forgotten entirely that she was naked and she went across the room toward the bathroom a little self-consciously.   
“Hey.”  
She stopped, rocking on her feet a little as she turned to look back. “What.”  
Brock had propped himself up, watching her. “Last night…”  
Vivienne waited.   
Brock rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head slowly. “Jesus, kid. I don’t even know. Look at you.” He nodded at her, his eyes running up from her toes to meet hers. He barely kept a smile in check “You knock me out.”  
Vivienne didn’t know if she could walk a step further away.

 

DC was humid and smoggy as usual when they made it back to American soil later that afternoon. Few words had been exchanged between Vivienne and Brock and the flight had been filled with awkward avoidance in order to keep suspicion out of the picture. All of the sudden it seemed like everything that Vivienne did was obvious and revealing—she caught a look that she might have been imagining from Cooper and conversation with Rollins had proven difficult because he kept glancing over at Rumlow like he knew something—and so she’d confined herself to the same spot the entire flight and engrossed herself in catching up on the episodes she’d missed from her TV show. Rumlow had given her the SHIELD passcode for the on-flight Internet when she asked for it. She didn’t even have to beg. She doubted he would have done it had they not had mad sex the night before. 

Vivienne hoisted her duffle bag over her shoulder as she walked toward the Triskelion port from the airstrip. Her black shirt was absorbing every bit of sun and heat that it could and she had begun to sweat. She looked forward to the shower that she had skipped that morning and to the meal that she had skipped the night before. She also looked forward to telling Clint a big, whopping “I told you so”.  
That probably wouldn’t be the best thing to start out with, though. “I’m sorry” would probably be a little more suitable.  
“Agent Donahue!”  
Vivienne paused and looked around for where the call had come from. A man was jogging out to her from one of the ports, a pager tucked under his arm. He wore dark aviators that flashed a little as they reflected the sunlight. He was balding a little, probably in his late forties. Vivienne waited for him to come to her, curious as to what the agent wanted.   
The man slowed to a walk when he noticed that he had gotten her attention and he stopped in front of her, extending a hand. “Agent Coulson,” he said, introducing himself.  
Vivienne took the handshake offered to her, making sure to keep her grip firm. A handshake said a lot about a person, after all. “Agent Donahue,” she said. “But I guess you already knew my name or else you wouldn’t have been calling me. That makes sense…”  
Coulson smiled. “It’s no matter, Agent. It’s always better when someone introduces himself anyways. Aside from getting acquainted, I’ve been told to extend an order for you to report to Director Fury’s office.”  
“Fury?” Vivienne’s brow furrowed. “I—why didn’t he just message me?”  
“The Director wanted it this way,” said Coulson. “I don’t usually question the big guy.”  
Vivienne nodded. “Yeah, I wouldn’t either. When does he want me?”  
“Now would be best.”  
“Oh,” said Vivienne. She looked back at the STRIKE team as they filed out of the jet and across the strip. “Well, I’m not sure if I’m free or not…”  
“No problem with that,” said Coulson briskly. “We’ve freed up your schedule for you. All you have to do is the walking part.”  
“Well alright,” said Vivienne, adjusting the strap across her shoulder. “I guess I’ll follow you, then.”

 

Director Nick Fury was standing in the corner of his office when Agent Coulson escorted Vivienne inside. He was busy with his tablet and he held up a finger, signaling for them to wait before he finished whatever he was doing on his device.  
Vivienne waited, clasping her wrist behind her back, and she gazed out the large windows past where Fury stood. DC crawled by, sluggish in the heat of the afternoon.   
When Fury finally lowered his screen and turned to face them, he banished the grim expression that he had previously been holding in the lines of his face and his brow softened a little to hide whatever was on his mind.  
“Agent Donahue,” He said in greeting. “It’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it?”  
Vivienne inclined her head. “Yes Sir, it has.”  
“Agent Coulson, thank you. You’re free to go.”  
Coulson nodded and turned to Vivienne. “Nice meeting you, Agent.”  
“You, too.”  
Coulson smiled and went back to the door of the office, leaving Vivienne completely alone with Fury.  
Fury was looking at Vivienne with his head tilted a little to the side. He folded his arms. Vivienne met his gaze, his attention making her a little uncomfortable.  
“You seem different, Agent,” said Fury finally. “I can’t quite place what’s different about you, though.”  
“Well it’s been a pretty decent amount of time since we’ve seen each other face-to-face, Sir,” offered Vivienne. “That probably has something to do with it.”  
“I’m sure it does,” said Fury, but he didn’t seem very convinced. Whatever was on his mind, he eventually let it go. “How do you like the STRIKE team, Donahue?”  
“I like it a lot.”  
“Good.” Fury started to make his way over to his desk. He held out a hand in the direction of the chairs across from his desk. “Sit.”  
Vivienne did as she was told, sinking down into one of the fairly plush leather chairs.   
“You know,” said Fury. “I had the feeling that you’d be a good fit there—you’re smart. Resourceful. And you have a good moral compass, or at least that’s what your testing results indicate. You were an exceptional graduate and now you’re an exceptional agent.”  
Vivienne shifted a little in her chair. “Thanks, Sir. I appreciate it.”  
Fury nodded. “Hopefully your transition onto the team went smoothly. I’m sure the men gave you a bit of a hard time in the beginning, but it wasn’t anything you couldn’t handle, considering you’re still here…?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Those guys have been working together for a while I guess, so they weren’t gonna be that hospitable when I first got in. I think things have been pretty much ironed out by now.”  
Fury studied her from across the desk. “Well that’s good.”  
Vivienne lifted her chin, trying not to let her confidence be deterred by the sudden feeling that this meeting wasn’t at all about her transition to the team. Hell, that had been a while ago. If he had really wanted to talk to her about that and get something more out of it, he would have had to ask her when she was amidst her feelings of doubt and insecurity. Now she didn’t know what he wanted.  
Fury didn’t seem to know how to carry on toward the next topic of conversation. He propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and pushed the tips of his fingers together, adjusting and readjusting.  
Vivienne prompted him. “So we aren’t really going to talk all this time about me making friends on STRIKE, are we, Sir? I mean, I’ve said pretty much all I need to say about that.”  
Fury took a breath. “No. I didn’t ask you here to talk about that. Actually, I wanted you to be here so that I could tell you something I think might help you while you’re on the team.”  
The room was quiet as Fury paused. Vivienne wouldn’t interrupt him or prod him. He would take his time and she’d let him. She was anxious to hear what he had to say, though.  
“When I was assigned to my first team,” started Fury. “It took me a little while to feel comfortable and for the team to accept me. Of course, I dedicated all of my time and effort to perform to the level they expected me to—it made me a better man and eventually it earned me a place amongst these men that I had begun to look up to.”  
Vivienne nodded. It sounded familiar.  
“It was really a great feeling.“ Continued Fury. “Being part of a family away from home. These men were like my brothers and I worked hard to listen and embody the agent they wanted me to be in order to maintain that stature.”  
Vivienne wondered what Fury was trying to turn the conversation toward.   
“However,” said Fury with a sigh, “I was so close that I didn’t even recognize that these men had a different agenda. I wanted to try so hard to impress these men that I ignored all of their faults. Hell, I was only able to open my eyes after three innocent men were killed while my S.O. attempted to sell SHIELD tech to the black market.”  
Vivienne didn’t know what to say. It seemed like Fury was implying the same thing Clint had—that she was somehow blind to some bigger motive or some grimy truth about the STRIKE team or her S.O.. It began to irritate her a little when the feeling began creeping over her. But she pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything. Fury was the Director. She’d let him finish. He could talk, but she didn’t have to listen, especially if it didn’t even pertain to her.   
Fury saw the look in her eyes, though, and he went on. “I’m not saying that STRIKE is as backwards as the team I was a part of,” he said reassuringly. “I just want you to keep your eyes open, because I know it’s hard. I was young and I was looking for a hero to model myself after because I wanted to be the best. I don’t want you to fall into something that could have been prevented.”  
Vivienne gritted her teeth and brushed her hair back as if the action might take the edge off of her frustration. It really didn’t help much. “If you think STRIKE might have some sort of problem, then why did you put me on the team? Or—or if you want to save me from something, then why did you just throw me in and tell me this now?”  
Fury waited a minute before answering in order to keep things from gaining speed too quickly. He wasn’t looking for an argument. “Agent,” he said calmly. “I’m not implying anything and I don’t know shit about the STRIKE team. I told you that story not so you might feel attacked, but so that you might be better prepared if something were to happen that your moral compass might not be so pleased with. I know you. I don’t know the men on STRIKE. That’s why I felt like I should put you there. It’s my job to make sure that we all play by the rules in this business.”  
Vivienne nodded reluctantly. Maybe that might make him stop accusing STRIKE of things they hadn’t even done.   
“All I’m asking is that you be watchful and try to step away and look at the picture from a distance every once in a while. It’s a huge favor I’m asking and I know you hate my guts already for even bothering you with this, but just humor me.” Fury watched her and Vivienne finally looked back at him; his words hadn’t been intended to hurt her, but that didn’t soften their blow either. “If you have anything you feel like you have to tell me—any time—just tell me. I’m not singling you out, but you’re the only new recruit the STRIKE team has had that’s lasted this long for years and I just want the peace of mind of knowing that SHIELD is still operating with the functionality I want to believe it is.”  
He waited as Vivienne shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She took a long breath.   
“Can you do that for me Agent?”  
Vivienne blinked a few times, trying to make sense of all of what he had said. “Sure.”  
Fury seem satisfied enough with her answer to continue. “I always say never to trust anyone. Never make bonds that can’t be broken. In this line of work, that’s all you can do to keep your head above the water.”  
Vivienne nodded, but she doubted she had the fortitude to mean it.   
“Well that’s all, Donahue. I’m proud of the work you’ve done for SHIELD. Thanks for your time.”  
“Yes, Sir.”

 

As soon as Vivienne left the room, Nick Fury tapped the icon on his desk that had been blinking the whole time that he had been talking. It was Pierce’s secretary and Nick knew exactly what she wanted. He had been expecting it after all of the emails he had ignored from his superior. Pierce was persistent and finally he desired a meeting face-to-face in order to ensure things weren’t ‘overlooked’.  
“Director Fury.”  
“This is him.”  
“Good afternoon, Sir. Pierce wishes to speak with you in his office.”  
“Of course he does.”  
“Will you be up?—“  
“Just give me a minute I’ll be there.”  
“I’ll let him know.  
Fury groaned and interlaced his fingers behind his neck, pulling the tension out of his shoulders. He knew what he would face—a barrage of questions. Hopefully he had postponed the meeting long enough for Pierce to see that, indeed, Donahue’s involvement with the team had benefited the overall motive.   
He finally pushed himself up from his chair and left his office, signing himself off to whatever lay ahead. When he entered the elevator, he pushed the button for the top floor and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He had heard it buzz earlier, but he hadn’t bothered to check the message until now. It was agent 13, the agent he had assigned to keep an eye on Steve Rogers. She was posing as a nurse who kept an apartment next door to the supersoldier and kept Fury updated on the Captain’s whereabouts and her interactions with him.   
He decrypted the message.  
“Came back from work and then he left again with a notebook. No sign of weaponry. Follow?”  
It had already been a good half hour since she had sent the message. Agent 13 would have known what to do. It was merely a courtesy for her to ask him what he wanted of her.   
Most likely Rogers was just off in the park sketching things. That’s where he had been the first time Agent 13 had followed him and it seemed like he frequently made on-site sketching a hobby. Whatever floated his boat. All Fury needed to know was that he wasn’t trying to make and carry out missions for himself before he started officially working for SHIELD. That might make a lot of paperwork and there was nothing he hated more than paperwork.  
The elevator dinged and the doors opened.   
Fury stowed his phone in his pocket again and walked out into the cool hall of the upper floor. The tile was black marble up there and the walls weren’t the same monotonous grey as the rest of the building. He could hear his own footsteps as he went past the secretary’s desk.  
“Secretary Pierce is waiting for you,” said the woman.  
“So I’ve been told.”   
Pierce stood at the other end of the office, pulling his sleeves down and straightening his cuff links. He looked up when Nick walked in, flashing the smile of a businessman, not unlike that of a crocodile.   
“Nick,” Pierce greeted, drawing out his name. “It’s been too long, as usual.”  
Nick forced a smile. “Indeed. We’re both working men and neither of our jobs make it easy to socialize, I’m afraid.”  
“Hmm.” Smiled Pierce. “The world has a habit of putting friends on the backburner, that’s true. And it’s a shame.”  
Fury looked around the office. They were alone. “Yes it is. But I don’t think you called me up to talk about the date for our next barbeque…”  
“You’re right,” said Pierce. “I didn’t. I called you up so that we could talk a little bit about the results of you going behind my back all those months ago with the STRIKE thing. I would have talked to you about it sooner, but you never replied to my emails.”  
Fury met Pierce’s gaze. It lacked the anger that he had expected to see in it. Instead, Pierce kept it unusually jovial and Fury had a hard time telling whether it was a sarcastic tactic or if he was actually happy.   
“You see,” said Pierce. “I intended for you to have walked away from our meeting all that time ago with the understanding that I had things under control because they were. I understand that I didn’t tell you that you couldn’t hire and train a new agent for the STRIKE team, but I didn’t really say that you could either.”  
“I remember it being a little unclear,” said Nick firmly. “But since nothing was being done about filling the position, I decided to take it upon myself to do the job--“  
“You overstepped,” interrupted Pierce. He saw Nick’s look and held up a hand, signaling for him to wait before he talked again. “But…That’s what I like about you. You’re decisive and you have a very hard time taking no for an answer. You have some sort of knack for picking out the best option in any given scenario and I wish I had it.”  
Nick eyed Pierce. The guy wasn’t mad at all.  
“Putting Agent Donahue on the team wouldn’t have been my choice. Like I said, the team would have been fine with five people. But so far, it hasn’t panned out to have been a bad idea. It seems like she’s getting along fine with the men and from what I’ve been reading in Agent Rumlow’s reports, she’s proven to be useful.” He nodded at Fury. “Have you read the reports?”  
“I have, and I’ve noticed the same thing.”  
“Good. I’m glad this worked out.”  
Fury had too much experience pushing against higher-ranking officials to think that they could possibly be done, but Pierce seemed rather content with the length and depth of their discussion.   
“However there are other matters that need a little more contemplation,” said Pierce. He tilted his head toward Nick, looking at him over his thickly-rimmed glasses. “I noticed in the last advancement of Steve Rogers’ career here in SHIELD that you think his services would be best utilized on the STRIKE team. Six members was pushing it for Delta, Nick. I don’t want to blow the effective engine my team is by constantly trying to make it better. It works just fine—exceptionally, if I may say so myself.”  
Nick sighed. “I understand that the STRIKE team is highly specialized and that tampering with its structure could have negative effects on its functionality, but if Agent Rumlow is as resourceful of a leader as you lead me to believe he is, then I’m sure he will find a way to employ the talent Rogers might bring to the team. Sending Rogers anywhere else would be a waste considering the level of his skill set.”  
“I understand that,” said Pierce. “And you’re not wrong.” He took a few steps closer to Nick, rubbing his chin in thought as he stared down at his reflection over the shiny black marble beneath his loafers. When he looked back up, he was smiling a little, almost as a person might if they were remembering something funny a friend had said a while back. “Here’s the deal. You can take it or leave it. If you leave it, you’ll have to park that supersoldier somewhere else.”  
“I’m listening,” said Nick.  
“Rogers will be granted a position on the STRIKE team, but he will be acting under the authority of Agent Rumlow. His involvement will be balanced as Agent Rumlow sees fit. Rumlow knows his team better than anyone and I think we need to leave it up to him to call the shots with Rogers. If something’s too risky toward the integrity of the team for Rogers to participate, Rogers sits on the bench. If Rumlow thinks that they might need another dog on the trail—“ Pierce waved his hand invitingly—“then Rogers gets to play ball. Does that sound fair?”  
Nick remembered the unforeseen and unusual tenseness spiderwebbing between Rumlow and Rogers the day he introduced them. He doubted Rumlow would give Rogers much of a chance to participate. He would have to find Rogers a better outlet eventually, but for now, it was the supersoldier’s best option.   
“Fine,” said Fury, almost believing his own sureness that he   
expressed. “Deal.”  
Pierce smiled and extended a hand. “Deal.”

 

It was five o-clock in the afternoon and Vivienne was still simmering from her encounter with Fury which collided fiercely with the burning that was still sizzling inside her from her night with Rumlow.  
She pulled another band-aid over her finger, glaring at the gauze underneath the adhesive strip as it absorbed her bright red blood. She huffed in annoyance and picked up another throwing star, narrowing her eyes at the insanely sharp blade and the tiny bead of her blood that ran along the edge of it.   
“Fuck you,” she said to it.   
She turned up her music and popped her ear buds back in, turning back to the empty range. The target wasn’t too far away, but it was further than she had thrown stars before and it was a bit of a challenge. She had decided that with the rest of the afternoon that Fury had given her off, she might utilize the time practicing her star-throwing accuracy. She spread her feet in an acceptable stance and gave one last measuring glance at the target before slinging her weapon. It zinged across the range and barely sliced into the side of the target. She let her head fall back with an annoyed groan. Fucking throwing stars.  
She skipped a song on her phone and grabbed another star from the few she had.   
“Hey!”  
The volume of Vivienne’s music was too high for her to hear the shout, though, and she proceeded to take her stance.   
“Hey! Vivienne!”  
Vivienne felt a hand come down on her shoulder and she jumped, whirling around to come face-to-face with Clint. He removed his hand slowly, looking sideways at the throwing star that she unintentionally brandished.  
“What’s up?” He asked cautiously.  
“I—uhh. Sorry.” Vivienne popped out her earbuds and let her arm fall to her side. She took a step back. “What are you doing here?”  
Clint shrugged. “Well apart from the fact that I work here.”  
“Seriously.”  
“Chill,” snorted Clint. “I was exercising. You know, sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups. All the ups.”  
“Well that’s nice.”  
Clint unscrewed the cap to the bottle of water in his hand. “So…Are we still doing this pissed thing or can we just be cool now?”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Your call.”  
“Then I vote we forget about it. Obviously there are more pressing issues at hand, such as your aim.” Clint dramatically shaded his eyes with a hand and gazed downrange at her target. “Which is surprisingly shitty.”  
Vivienne whacked his shoulder with her free hand as compensation for the remark.  
Clint rubbed the spot tenderly. “Hey. Ow.”  
“We can be friends, but don’t push it, you ass.”  
“Sheesh.”  
Vivienne looked back at the target and popped an ear bud back in. Clint pulled it out by the cord.   
“No ear buds allowed in the range.”  
“Go fuck yourself.”  
“What? It’s distracting. Plus you could hurt somebody.”  
Vivienne shook her head, but didn’t put her music back in. She turned back to the target. “If you say one more thing that belongs in one of those stupid nineties safety videos, you’re outta here. Capiche?”  
“Yeah. Whatever. Capiche.”  
Vivienne took her stance again.  
“Hold up.”  
She sighed and dropped her shoulders in irritation. “What.”  
“Just bring your back foot back a little further and lean a little more—it’ll give you more power as you’re bringing your arm up and out because you’re using your body and not just tossing it.”  
Vivienne grudgingly adjusted her stance.   
“Alright, now eye on the—“  
“—Would you just quit??”  
Clint held his hands up in surrender and took a few steps back to lean against the wall behind them. He tossed his water bottle in the air while he waited. Vivienne rolled her eyes and looked across at the target.   
She slung the weapon and the star left her fingers, slicing through the air and burying itself closer to the bullseye.   
Vivienne looked back at Clint. “Ha-HA.”  
Clint nodded. “Not bad.”   
“Tch.” Said Vivienne. “’Not bad’. Let’s see you try, homeslice.”  
“I don’t think that would help morale here.”  
Vivienne looked at him flatly. “Fuck morale. I’m just gonna assume you’re too afraid to try. Afraid that I’m gonna one-up you.”  
Clint smiled down at the floor, nodding a little. “Uhuh.”  
Vivienne waited, setting a hand on her hip expectantly. “Well?”  
Clint sighed. “If you insist.”   
He went forward and grabbed a couple of stars from the pile Vivienne had gathered. She hung back and watched as he rolled up the sleeves of the purple hoodie he wore. He looked at the stars and then looked back at her with a wink before he took a quick stance. He slung them with surprising deftness across the range. Both of the stars burrowed deeply into the center of the bullseye. Clint rubbed his hands together and looked back at her again, his mouth twisted a little as he obviously repressed a grin. Vivienne was speechless, but that didn’t last long.   
“That was rigged.”  
“No, it wasn’t.”  
“Says you who probably rigged that.”  
“How would I rig that?”  
Vivienne squinted at him and Clint let his grin break through. She grabbed his water bottle from the stand he had placed it on and pulled back her arm, threatening to throw it at him. She couldn’t help but to smile, too.   
“You piece of shit.”  
Clint held up a hand in mock defense. “Why are you so violent? If you swear any more, they’re gonna have to rate you R.”  
Vivienne smirked smugly. “I already am, sucker.” She threw the water bottle at him, but Clint caught it in the air.   
“Is that supposed to be cool?”  
Vivienne laughed. “Yeah.”  
Clint shook his head and rubbed his fingernails over his jacket, checking them with dramatic emphasis. “Oh, Vi. Looks like you’re just going to need to take some lessons from the pro.”  
Vivienne grabbed another star in an attempt to get back to work, but she didn’t throw it quite yet. “Should I buy you a neck brace to hold up your fat ego?”  
“I could rock that.”  
Vivienne smiled to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to Clint, but she was glad that they could pick back up again on a good note. She looked forward to possibly spending a little more time with him again, even though work was going to be trying as always and her free time was never really free. She felt the work stress beginning to build as she thought about exactly how much free time she didn’t have and about having to debrief after the mission and do paperwork and get back on the treadmill. She also needed to dedicate a little time to figure out this thing…the thing with Brock, whatever that was. That might take some time.   
“What’s up with the face?”  
Vivienne hadn’t even realized she was making a face. “What?”  
Clint squinted at her. “The dork face. The one you were just making.”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks redden a little.   
“Uh-oh.” Said Clint. “Did I just stumble across something?”  
Vivienne sighed, looking across the range again to make sure they were alone. “Tch. No.”  
Clint looked around, too, trying to get in on whatever level her mind was at the moment. “Well,” he said. “I have a free pizza on my punch card from Fat Rickie’s and a half case of beers at my apartment, not to mention….” He paused for effect and lowered his voice. “The first episode of the new season of ‘Brainz and Other Undead Cravings’ pre-recorded.”  
Vivienne snorted. “What? I haven’t even finished season five yet!”  
“Well then I have that, too.”  
“Man,” she said. “You know me too well. Fat Rickie’s is my weakness.”  
“So that’s a yes?”  
Vivienne tilted her head to the side, pretending to think. “I’ll have to get my stuff out of my locker—my gym clothes smell like Satan’s armpit. But after that let’s meet at the coffee shop. Give me like a half an hour.”  
“Sounds like a plan.”  
Vivienne beamed at him and Clint gave her a sloppy salute before he turned on his way out of the gym.

 

Brock reread the same sentence he had been stuck on for the last couple of minutes. It read like shit and it sounded fake. It was fake, but only STRIKE and Pierce knew that. He hated trying to glue together pieces of alibies to make a viable story to sell to SHIELD. It took time to tell a believable story that matched the results to their mission. For instance, if Henley came back from what SHIELD was supposed to have believed to be a simple reconnaissance mission with one arm, it was Brock’s job to try to make up something to explain how that limb was lost and to somehow keep SHIELD from calling bullshit on him. The last thing SHIELD needed to know was that their STRIKE team was taking part in unsavory activities and creating clever alibies to cover their deeds.   
Brock pressed and held the delete button, clearing almost half a paragraph. Why couldn’t Pierce do this?  
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, rereading the report from the beginning to make sure there were no red flags and to stimulate fresh ideas about what might come next. It wasn’t hard to make the rebelling men in Cambodia sound like terrorists—all he had to do was write something about them opening fire on civilians or casting threats. The threading it all together part was what gave him headaches. He had never been the paper and pencil-pushing type and it was hard for him to sit down and grind out reports. And yet that was his part that he needed to play. It was an important part and he understood that, and so he played it.   
“Well?”  
Brock had heard Rollins come into his office, but he didn’t have much time to waste talking before he had to have his report submitted. “Well what.”  
“You know what.”   
Brock looked up over the edge of his computer. Rollins had leaned back against the frame of the door and he didn’t look like he was planning on going anywhere. He folded his arms over his chest and inclined his head, implying that Brock did, indeed, ‘know what’.   
And Brock did. He couldn’t help but to smile a little. “I’m busy.”  
“I didn’t ask whether you were busy or not.”  
“Well you didn’t ask a very straightforward question, either, Agent Rollins.”  
Rollins looked like he was thinking about smiling. “Was it worth it?”  
Brock looked down at his keyboard. “None of your business.”  
“I think it’s my business. We shared a wall in Madrid. I recorded everything. Blackmail purposes.”  
Brock grinned. “No you didn’t. And yes. Yes, it was worth it.”  
Rollins looked intrigued. It was, after all, their teammate they were talking about here. “How good?”  
Brock broke down and let a breath hiss from between his teeth, shaking his head slowly. When he looked back up at his friend, his poker face had already started to lose its tenacity “Jack you have no idea…” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “I don’t have the words. It went by way too fast—the night, everything. And God, I just can’t even describe…”  
“I think you already did,” said Jack. “Like I said, I was in the room next door.”  
“Get out.”  
“Hold on. I’m not finished.”   
Brock knew that he had allowed himself to be caught and so he sat through his punishment.   
“Whether this was a one time thing or whether you’re ever able to get that poor girl drunk enough again to let you bone her, you gotta be careful.” Jack paused, trying to think of how to word what was on his mind. “And I know that you don’t need me telling you how to do anything ‘cause it’s not my place and I get that. I do. But like I said, be careful. Donahue’s pretty perceptive and she might be pretty dumb to pick you out of any of us to play hide the pickle with under the sheets, but she’s also smart enough to pick up on even the smallest wiff of bullshit and you know that. You can’t let her jeopardize Insight. I know you have it under control, but I also think we both know that Pierce doesn’t need to know about this.”  
Brock met Rollins’ eyes sharply with the mention of his boss. It wasn’t a threat and he knew Jack would never rat on him, but it didn’t stop him from being wary about it.  
“And, as a friend and your teammate, I have to remind you what’s at stake if there’s a slip up.”  
“I’m not slipping, Jack,” said Brock sharply.  
“I know, Sir.” Jack paused and they looked at each other, their gaze saying more than their mouths could. The topic suddenly took on a hint of bitterness and Brock gritted his teeth.   
“You know,” he said, lowering his voice. “I can still get a leash on things if they get out of hand.”  
“Can you?”  
“Yeah,” Brock’s tone lingered a little too long on a flat note of irritation and he hoped Rollins would back off and realize that he had gone too far. He hardened his gaze and he sensed Jack become uncomfortable. “Yeah, I can.”  
Jack couldn’t look at him anymore and he looked out at the gym beyond the office door. “I just want to see this through. Smoothly. I’ve worked hard for this.”   
“You think I haven’t?”   
“I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is be careful.”  
“Get out.” Brock looked back down at his report. “I can watch my own back, Jack, but of course your concern is always appreciated.” He regretted the sarcasm that he infused his words with as soon as they slipped from his lips—Jack was just doing his job and they had always been there for each other—but this didn’t concern him and he knew what he was doing.  
He heard Jack’s disappointed sigh—he had been intended to hear it.  
Brock pressed and held the delete button again. “Just go.”

Vivienne walked down the back hall toward the gym. It was quiet. She assumed that Rumlow had probably allowed the team to take off early for the day.  
She thought about what Fury had said. She had been warned from multiple sources before that he was paranoid, so she didn’t think much of his advice. Besides, Rumlow wrote and submitted full mission reports detailing their activities as soon as they came back from missions. If Fury had and doubt as to their whereabouts at a given time or the details of what they were doing, Rumlow’s log that he kept should clear all of that up. Vivienne decided that Fury had just been in the business too long. Once something shitty happened to a person, that person often had a tendency to look for the shitty in everything and associate similar events with their own personal past. It wasn’t a fair practice to the present, but Vivienne didn’t blame the guy. Maybe Clint was the same and that’s what had triggered him, too.  
She was about to open the gym door when it was suddenly pushed open from the inside. Rollins emerged, his face grim. He cast a glance in Vivienne’s direction.   
“I thought you were supposed to be in a meeting,” he said tersely.   
“The meeting’s finished.”  
“What did Fury want?”  
Vivienne grabbed the door and held it open. “I just had some paperwork that still needed to be filled out. Follow up stuff, you know.”  
Rollins’ gaze went over her, sizing her up from head to toe. “Huh.”  
Vivienne waited for him to keep walking, but he paused, looking like he had something to say. She watched his face change and he became his usual stony self again. “Don’t forget to check in your gear. Cooper brought your things in for you.”  
“How nice,” said Vivienne.  
Rollins gave her a last once-over and then he turned without another word, walking down the hall Vivienne had just come from.  
Vivienne made a face, but that didn’t stop her from trying to be a little cheerful. “Have a good night!”  
She rolled her eyes when she got no response and continued on into the gym. She glanced over at Rumlow’s office out of habit and started out over the light that spilled over the floor from his open door. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him bent over his computer in his office. She felt butterflies begin their frantic, desperate beating inside of her. She was almost at the locker room door.  
“Donahue.”  
Vivienne really didn’t know whether she had hoped that he would notice her or not. She wondered if she should pretend she hadn’t heard him, but she was too close for that. She reluctantly looked over into the light. Rumlow was looking through the window at her, clearly as surprised as she was that he’d called her.   
Vivienne glanced around the gym and started slowly toward Rumlow’s office. When she stepped inside, she felt the sudden urge to talk—say something, make meaningless conversation.  
“Hey,” said Vivienne, giving him finger guns. Finger guns. “What’s up?”  
Rumlow didn’t seem to have noticed her awkwardness. He was looking right into her eyes. Vivienne saw a shadow of the familiar hunger there and something else. She couldn’t place it  
“Hey,” he greeted finally. “You coming to get your gear? I let the boys off early…”  
His tone was unreadable. She didn’t want to peg it too quickly for fear of learning that it, indeed, held an underlying iciness to it that she suspected could be there. She wondered what the hell that was all about.  
“Yeah.” She said slowly, trying hard to read his expression. “Apparently Coop brought in my stuff and yeah I saw…”  
Rumlow looked like there was a lot he wanted to say, but Vivienne doubted he would say any of it. He wasn’t that kind of guy.   
“Well,” her S.O. said abruptly. “I uh—I just wanted to make sure that you knew what the plan was for the rest of the day.”  
“—That we don’t have work.”  
“Yes.”  
Vivienne clenched her teeth. She had expected something more. Maybe a smile or a quiet comment. But none of that came. She didn’t know why it frustrated her—they were in a work setting again and what they had done the night before had no place between them at the moment. “Ok. Well I guess I’ll go get my stuff then.”  
“Yeah.” Said Rumlow, biting his lip a little as he gazed at her. “Yeah, ok. Do that.”  
“Alright,” Vivienne smiled tightly. She held her breath, turned on her heel, and started out through the door and across the gym again.  
When she got to the locker room, she pushed through the swinging door and jogged back to where her locker was, burning off the tingling sensation that had coursed through her body while she had been talking with Rumlow. She wanted to do something. Push something over, stab something. Scream maybe. Why was he so fucking hard to read? The way he had looked at her— she still had a very hard time wading through his surliness to uncover exactly what a look meant even though she had known him for over a year now. But her heart ached, protesting against whatever stupid act he was putting on now. She could still almost feel the memories of the night before; his calloused hands, the gentle pinch of her skin between his teeth, the warmth of his breath that sent chills over her skin and exhilarated her with the soft sound of it near her ear.   
She let the breath she held go, looking up into the fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling as if she could somehow transport herself back with that same sound.   
But she was here and not there and she didn’t know what came next. Usually she would face challenges with a clear mind and the best intent, but her mind couldn’t be more muddled and overwhelmed with the barrage of feelings that struggled to be recognized and as for intent—she didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to make of what had happened.   
She grabbed her PT clothes out of her locker and shoved them into her gym bag. She wondered if she should have said anything else to Rumlow. She replayed their conversation a minute ago in her head. She could have pressed him—they were close enough for that, weren’t they? Even if they hadn’t spent the past night in each other’s arms, he was still her S.O.. Vivienne groaned. She always had to make things unnecessarily complicated.   
She swung her gym bag back over her arm and walked heatedly past the lockers that the men used and then through the doors into the dark gym again. This time, she didn’t look at Rumlow. She wondered if this was where it would end.   
“Zero five hundred hours, Donahue.”  
Vivienne shook her head mostly to herself and whipped out her phone to text Clint. “Fuck you,” she muttered under her breath. 

 

Vivienne had a hard time following what Clint was saying. He was in the middle of telling her some story—something about his dog and some shady neighbors of his or landlords or something, but Vivienne had lost him halfway through when her own thoughts finally consumed all of her attention.   
She was curled up on the couch in Clint’s living room, a barely touched beer in one hand and a thread that stuck out from one of the cushions pinched between her fingers in the other. She pulled at the thread, unblinking, as she waded into her thoughts.   
Clint was banging around in the kitchen, doing dishes, telling his story at the same time. They had called for pizza, but it hadn’t arrived yet.   
“Are you listening?”  
Vivienne reeled out of her daze, looking up and over the back of the couch at him. “Uh—what?”  
“I said—it’s not like I was Russian to get anywhere.” Clint paused for emphasis.  
Vivienne looked at him blankly.  
“It’s the part where you laugh. It was supposed to be funny but never mind.”   
Vivienne looked around the apartment. “Where’s your dog?”  
Clint looked too. “I dunno.”  
“You’re a terrible pet owner.”  
“You’re a terrible listener. I’ve told you before that he likes to go places by himself. I dunno. He’s a wanderer.” Clint waved a fork in the air. “Who am I to keep him from his destiny?”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes and settled back into the couch. She started picking at the thread again. It bothered her.   
The doorbell rang. Vivienne listened while Clint went over to answer it and she waited for him to pay the delivery guy and bring in their dinner. Clint closed the door and walked into the living room, setting the pizza box on the coffee table in front of the couch.   
“Smells like a good time,” he said. He grabbed the remote and sat down across from her. “Hey stop that.”  
Vivienne yanked the thread out with a minuscule snap. Her lips twitched into a smirk. “Stop what?”  
“Stop destroying my things.”   
Vivienne leaned forward and opened the pizza box—it was a Hawaiian—their favorite. She pulled a piece out and then settled back into her spot again.  
They binge watched five episodes straight. Vivienne’s eyelids began to get heavy during the last part of the fifth and she sank a little lower into the cushions. The day was beginning to catch up to her and she was having a hard time staying awake. Her attention began to fade in and out and she started thinking about everything else she should do before she allowed herself to go to sleep. Clint was merciful enough to cut off the TV before the sixth episode began; he saw her look and knew they definitely weren’t getting any further into Brainz that night.   
“Hey, Vi,” he said quietly. The TV had been off for a few solid minutes and Vivienne had closed her eyes, unable to keep them open any longer.   
Vivienne sighed. “What.”  
“You falling asleep over there?”  
Vivienne peeped one eye open, looking across at Clint, who was petting a dog that had suddenly appeared. “Mh. Maybe. Hi, Lucky.”  
The lab mix wagged his tail happily at the attention and he sauntered over to push his nose up under Vivienne’s arm. Vivienne untucked her arm and petted the dog. She looked over at Clint.   
“I’m gonna steal your dog.”  
Clint shrugged. “I mean. He’s pretty easy to take care of, so I wouldn’t blame you for wanting him.”  
Vivienne scratched behind Lucky’s ears and rested her head against the back of the couch. “Hey thanks, Clint.”  
“For what?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Pizza. Brainz. Lucky. This whole night. It’s been fun and I’m sorry for being a bit of a drag. I’ve had a really weird week.”  
“Eh.” Said Clint. “It’s nothing.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “I mean it. Everything lately has just been…I dunno. Rollercoaster-ish. The last thing I needed was to go back to my place and keep the ride going over and over. So thanks. I’m really happy we aren’t pissed at eachother anymore.”  
Clint smiled at her. “Me, too, Vi.”


	19. Hellbender Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more angst--so sorry! They're writing themselves this way, I swear! Perspective is everything.

The next morning sped into life faster than Vivienne had wanted it to. She had spent the night on Clint’s couch and her body ached from the inability to find a comfortable sleeping position while she had camped out in his living room. She wasn’t ungrateful, though. She had needed the break from her usual routine and Clint had provided her that much.

STRIKE fell back into the morning routine—basic PT, and it was a range day, so they worked on their marksmanship. Vivienne had loaded her clip and dispelled her bullets without hearing so much as a word from Rumlow over her comm line. Usually he had something to say, but that day there was neither praise nor correction.

Cooper had attempted to draw her into a conversation about recent political events and his stance on the particular topics, but Vivienne hated politics and she opted to expend most of her energy staring hard at the back of Rumlow’s neck as they walked back down the hall toward the gym. It was lunchtime and they would split up and go their own ways before reuniting again to spend the afternoon going over some sort of change in their healthcare plans or retirement or some sort of boring shit that nevertheless needed to get taken care of.

Cooper had invited her to eat with him—a rare gesture, considering that he usually ate with Rollins, but Rollins was being moody and he had disappeared from the SHIELD cafeteria to who knows where.

Vivienne stood behind Cooper in line for the poor excuse of a hibachi joint they had in the Triskelion and was handed a plate of steaming rice and egg rolls.

She followed Cooper back to a table past the initial lunch crowd and sat down. Maybe it was because he had shared a little about himself to her or maybe it was something else, but Cooper had begun to engage with her a little more than he had before and he had opened up enough for Vivienne to get a decent picture of the kind of person he used to be and why he was the way he was. She implied the last bit from the things he’d told her, but he was pretty easy to read and one would have to be pretty inattentive not to be able to gather the little things about the displaced Texan.

Vivienne had decided she liked Cooper a lot. He was honest, which was more than most of the team could say.

She tapped the tiny packet of soy sauce out over her egg roll.

“You did good on the range today,” said Cooper around the better portion of a wonton he had dredged from his soup.

“Thanks,” said Vivienne. “I always do better when I don’t have Rumlow barking in my ear.”

Cooper nodded. “Understandable. And surprising. Usually he has something to bitch about to everybody.”

Vivienne looked around the cafeteria. She supposed her S.O. had ditched the daily grub for a run to the deli across the street from the Triskelion. It was out of her price range, but Rumlow could afford it. People who yelled tended to get paid better than those who were yelled at.

“Hey, so when’s Captain America supposed to join the team?” She asked, swallowing the irritation that had bubbled up while thinking of her S.O.. “I totally forgot that he’s trying to get on STRIKE.”

Cooper twirled his fork in his chow mein. “Who knows. It depends on how fast his paperwork gets approved and if he can pass his exams like anybody else.”

Vivienne nodded. That made sense. “Why do you think Rumlow has such a thing against him even though he’s never met him?”

Cooper raised an eyebrow. “Who wouldn’t?”

Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Wait—what? Why?”

“The guy is special because he got shot up with some experimental steroids.”

“Yeah, but he also played a key part in world war two taking down Hydra.”

“Exactly.” Said Cooper. “The guy’s history. He’s a has-been. We do things much differently now than we did in world war two.”

“Hm.” Said Vivienne. “I guess that’s true.” She scooped up some of her rice and watched the steam roll off of it. “But it looks like Fury’s pretty dead-set on getting Rogers on the team.”

“Mhm.”

Vivienne looked up. Cooper had become engrossed with something on his phone. It didn’t seem like the idea of Rogers really concerned him. Vivienne let it rest and glanced around the cafeteria again. She knew she wouldn’t see her S.O., but she looked anyways. She wished that she could just leave it in Madrid, like he probably had, but it was proving much harder to shake than she had thought it might be. Her eyes drifted, looking for his broad shoulders, flitting over face after face, trying to find those eyes. It was fruitless, though, as she knew it would be, and she hated herself for every face that wasn’t his.

 

 

The week slowly dragged by, pulling up frustration and tension in its wake. A few petty arguments had been had, mostly between Rumlow and Rollins, sometimes involving Cooper, who mostly just threw himself in between them for the fun of stirring things up between the apparent long-time friends.

After wasting a fair amount of her time and energy on trying to figure out why the hell she was getting such unusual treatment from her S.O.,Vivienne had made the decision to occupy her time with distractions—she was too tired with the idea of trying to pick a fight with Rumlow that she just began to ignore the way he looked at her which contradicted so harshly and to such a frustrating degree with the way he was acting. She dedicated some time to addressing some of the needs in her own life, which had included another Brainz night with Clint and eventually finishing her kitchen and refurbishing all of the cabinets and her sink. When she finally completed her project at one in the morning, she stood back a little and took it all in. It had been a while since she’d done something for herself that gave her such a feeling of accomplishment; it was refreshing and reassuring that she was still capable of being productive outside of work. She had just needed the motivation.

And as she stood in her kitchen, holding a box of frozen yogurt and rocking on her feet a little to the new Snoop Dogg album she had rewarded herself to, everything seemed a much simpler. Madrid seemed less important because she remembered that it didn’t have to consume her. It was freeing to think like that and she tried very hard to hold onto the wisdom that wanted to be hers—the new realization that she could be perfectly content whenever she wanted to be because perspective was everything.

Perspective was everything.

 

 

The lights in the Sim room dimmed and the screen on Vivienne’s helmet flickered to life. She adjusted her settings and synced her mock rifle to the Sim feed. When she cleared her screen, they were standing in a projected version of a sun-lit back alley, most likely somewhere in Europe, considering the architecture of the tall buildings around them and the cobblestone of the streets that were underneath their feet. She looked around at the team beside her. Rollins and Henley were still adjusting their helmets. Rumlow was checking the time.

“Alright, STRIKE.” He said. “We have thirty-five minutes to complete this mission. It’s a level five retrieval scenario. Formation will be called out upon launch.”

Vivienne looked around at the buildings beside her. The graphics were exceptional—she almost felt like she was there. But then again, everything was based upon real places and they were accurate down to the last pixelated brick.

One of the men seemed as impressed with the surroundings as she was and he spoke up. “Where is this anyways?”

Rumlow tapped the side of his helmet and brought up the formulated intelligence across his visor. “We are in…Barcelona.” He paused and looked over at Cooper, but Cooper wasn’t looking at him.

After complaints from the team a few months back about Rumlow’s apparent inability to choose a decent variety of settings (an outburst deriving from the third time in a two-week period that he chose Russia as the backdrop) Rumlow grudgingly allowed the men to take turns choosing their preferred locations.

The particular day happened to be Cooper’s turn and Cooper had chosen Barcelona.

Vivienne didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or to find humor in the situation. There was no Madrid setting, but she was sure that if there was, Cooper would have chosen that. He had occasionally caught the awkward glance between Vivienne and Rumlow and it seemed that he fed off of the idea that there was some sort of unspoken tension there. It made Rumlow seem a little more human or something. Vivienne could understand the draw if he, indeed, was doing it for that reason.

Rumlow looked down and Vivienne could almost visualize the face he was making behind the mask. He needed to collect himself before continuing.

She shook her head to herself and readied her gun. She wouldn’t let it bother her.

Finally Rumlow cleared his throat. “Formation Beta. Launch.”

The team moved forward into the back of a building at the end of the alley. Vivienne fell in step slightly behind Rollins, covering for him while he pressed forward on the right flank. They cleared the rooms on the bottom floor of what appeared to be a banking facility before moving on. A spacious lobby loomed over them after they emerged from one of the back halls. No simulated individuals had been activated and the room was silent and empty. The team scoped out the space, quickly checking to make sure there were no enemy threats before initiating a more in-depth sweep.

A door was slightly ajar across lobby from the hall they had come through, but the temptation of the obvious clue practically begged for a sniper’s attention if they were to explore the area. Vivienne would need to be sent upward to check the overhanging balcony above them before anybody attempted to make a move for the door. She anticipated the order. She would go up, Cooper would be pulled to cover her and remain above for tactical advantages, and then she would come back down after Rumlow and Rollins spearheaded the entrance into the room across the lobby. It was textbook.

“Cooper and…Rollins. Split.”

Vivienne looked up at Rollins, then back at Rumlow. That should have been her name. She couldn’t tell if Rumlow was looking at her or not through his visor, but he made no indication of having any second thoughts about his orders.

Rollins hesitated, but then he split off to join Cooper. Cooper stood there for a moment, clearly thrown off by the switch. Rumlow pressed on and walked up past Vivienne. Vivienne looked back at Cooper and Rollins before making up her mind to just go with it. It wasn’t her place in the formation and she knew nothing about where she was supposed to be or what the hell she was supposed to do, but whatever. It saved Rumlow from having to say her name and acknowledge that she was actually there.

She did as she had seen Rollins do and she moved in behind Rumlow, waiting for Cooper and Rollins’ clear. It seemed to take the guys forever to actually get the job done and Vivienne spent every second staring hard into the back of Rumlow’s neck. There was a tiny twisted scar there that started at the base of his hairline and cut down below his collar and beneath the fabric of his shirt. She remembered it, curled like a ‘J’ under his left shoulderblade, a noticeable divot brought into clarity with the sweat that had glistened over his back.

“Clear.”

Vivienne snapped out of the trance she had stumbled into and lurched into action, following Rumlow’s purposeful stride as he went forward, his gun trained on the gaping blackness of the open door before them. When he reached the handle, he swung it wide and moved inward, taking an offensive crouch as he quickly worked to clear the room. Vivienne wondered how the hell they were supposed to see anything to clear it, but she followed him anyways.

A red light started to blink across the room. She heard the scuff of Rumlow’s boots as he turned to assess and effectively respond to the new factor. She blinked, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“Cover me.” Said Rumlow. He moved toward the light.

Vivienne gritted her teeth against the frustration of being unable to see. It helped astronomically to actually be able to see when trying to cover your S.O.’s ass.

She slid her flashlight out of her utility belt and clicked it on.

The furthest corner of the room lit up with gunfire and Vivienne slapped a hand to the side of her helmet to turn down the volume. “What the fuck?!”  
Rumlow sprang up and returned fire. Vivienne tried to fire back, but there was no response from the program to convey her defensive attempt. Her stomach dropped and her cheeks flushed when she realized she hadn’t fully activated her weapon, rendering her gun a useless piece of plastic. Her vest lit up, glowing red along the grooves to indicate a fatal hit.

Rumlow’s lit up beside her.

“Goddammit!”

Vivienne bit her lip when she heard the tone of Rumlow’s voice. The red light suddenly went off and the room shook as a detonator was blown, but Vivienne was already dead, so she didn’t have to worry about the explosion.

“PausepausePAUSE!” Yelled Rumlow. “Pause the fucking Sim!”

The explosion stopped mid-bloom and everything suddenly went quiet.

Rumlow stood for a moment, motionless. “Lights.”

The lights in the sim room came on, making the visuals fade out of view.

He stood there, his back to them all. He didn’t say anything.

Vivienne felt guilt squeeze her, urging her to fill the silence. “Hey. I’m sorry. It was my mistake.”

Rumlow let a long breath go through his nose, tilting his face upward.

“I swear it was a one time thing,” said Vivienne.

“Ouch.” She heard one of the men mutter.

Vivienne’s cheeks burned. She hadn’t meant the other thing. She had meant her inability to fully sync her weapon. It didn’t matter.

“Sim, power down,” said Rumlow. The system shut off. He turned slowly around and pulled off his helmet. His mouth didn’t seem to know whether to try to smile or grimace and Vivienne had no idea how to read the look on his face, but she knew for sure he couldn’t be happy. “What happened.”

“I—I don’t know. I was thrown off a little I guess. I thought Rollins—“

“—Rollins what?”

“I said I don’t know. I’m not used to his spot and I—“

“—Unfortunately we don’t have the privilege to stick to formation every time we’re in the field, Donahue.” Rumlow interrupted sharply. “Try not to let it fuck with you so much.”

Vivienne stared at him. “I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t stop bullets.”

“God,” said Vivienne under her breath. She turned around, not wanting to prolong the upset. “Let it rest. I get it, ok? I fucked up. I’ll try harder.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said ‘I’ll try harder’.” Vivienne rolled her eyes to herself and started walking back toward the men, awaiting the Sim reset that usually came after a shit-show like that had been.

“Donahue.”

Vivienne shook her head. She really didn’t want this to turn into what it always did. It hurt a little more to think of everything they were burying beneath the debris from the storm brewing up between them. She looked up at Cooper and Rollins who watched from the balcony above her. She waited through the pause she knew would be there.

“Vivienne!”

Vivienne yanked her helmet off and spun around. “Jesus!—what?”

“You—You’re suspended until further notice.”

“Suspended?” Vivienne snorted. “Seriously?”

Rumlow didn’t blink.

“I forgot to sync my fucking gun and you’re suspending me?” Vivienne said slowly, her volume rising. “No, that’s not what this is about.” Vivienne felt her cheeks redden, but she kept going. “That’s not what this is about at all. This is about you, Brock. It’s all you and your inability to deflate your stupid ego enough to deal with normal people problems like a fucking normal person.” Vivienne’s heart raced and she could hear it in her ears when she paused. She hated how jittery she felt. “You could talk to me and tell me what the hell the problem is, but I don’t think you’re capable of that.” Her voice broke a little and she stopped, feeling like she had already said too much. She knew she had. “But whatever. Fine.”

Rumlow’s face didn’t change. He didn’t say anything.

Vivienne sighed and turned back around to look up at Rollins and Cooper. She shrugged. “Apparently I’m suspended, so I’m leaving.”

Cooper gave her a salute. Rollins said nothing.

Vivienne dropped her helmet on the floor and walked past Henley and Crue toward the exit. She shrugged the heavy sim vest off and dropped that on the floor, too.

 

 

When she got to the locker room, it was all Vivienne could do not to allow her eyes to sting like they had as soon as she had left the Sim. It was really just too much to try to comprehend. It was all too frustrating. She felt all of the different parts of him were pulling her this way and that and she wondered if that’s what this was all about. Maybe he got a kick out of dragging her along like this, and if that was true, she wouldn’t let it continue. But what would she do?

Vivienne yanked off her shirt and pressed it to her face, wiping away the beads of sweat on her forehead. She didn’t know what to do.

She wished that, just for once, maybe she wouldn’t dig herself into such deep holes like this one.

Her mind drifted and she looked up at the ceiling of the locker room—white, blank, expressionless.

There had been a boy back at the academy who had twisted her into heartache like this—not to the extreme that Brock did now, but to the point that Vivienne had been brought to tears with the hate she found for herself when she realized how much she cared and what it did to her. She had promised herself that it wouldn’t happen again and everything that had been wasted feeding the flame between them was diverted to becoming the best. It was like something from a movie—girl gets boy, boy breaks her heart, girl dries her tears and puts all of her energies toward bettering herself—and Vivienne had. It had landed her on the STRIKE team, hadn’t it? The best of the best.

Vivienne took a long breath and looked back down at the lock on her locker door. She closed her eyes, clearing her head like she promised she would four years ago, and then twisted her combination.

The door to the locker room burst open, making Vivienne jump. She dropped her lock on the floor with a clatter and she rushed to pick it up. The sound of boots coming over the tile came closer, past the aisle the men used.

Vivienne felt her heart beating around in her chest as if it were trying to find a way out of her ribcage. She breathed through her nose, trying to calm her breaths. She fumbled her t-shirt as she was trying to pull it out of her locker and she dropped her lock again.

“Donahue, we need to talk—“

Vivienne snatched her lock off of the floor and turned around to see Brock standing across the bench from her. Her breath caught in her throat when his eyes met hers.

“No, no, we don’t. You haven’t said a damn word to me since last week until now so I think we’re fine. We don’t need to talk.” Vivienne’s voice was going all on its own. It didn’t feel like she was even in control of what she said. If she had been, maybe she would have said something different.

“Yeah we do. I think it would make this easier—“

“What? Make what easier?” Vivienne swallowed. “You already suspended me. Are you gonna fire me now or discharge me or whatever the fuck they do here?”

“No…”

Vivienne pushed her fingers through her hair. “Then I’m just really not in the mood. And I really don’t feel like talking to you right now.”

“Hey.”

Vivienne turned back to her locker and grabbed her pants.

“Hey,” said Brock, stepping over the bench. He grabbed her shoulders and Vivienne looked up at him. “Listen to me. Hear me out.”

Vivienne could smell that smell that was distinctly him—cologne, Listerine on his breath that she could almost feel on the tip of her nose.

“I did this all wrong,” said Brock. “I should have done some things differently. That’s not easy for me to admit—“

“Do I have to listen to this if I’m suspended?” Asked Vivienne, shrugging her shoulders out of his grasp. “Or can I go?”

“No—!“ said Brock sharply. “I mean, just listen to me. You don’t understand the pressure. I definitely shouldn’t have slept with you in Madrid—“

“Good God!” said Vivienne in exasperation. “I don’t fucking care. It was nothing. I’m beyond that—“

There was a pause.

“You are?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

Vivienne looked at him. His eyes flitted over hers.

“That’s what you said,” said Brock. “And I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re lying to me. That’s part of my job, Vivienne. I actually know when you’re lying to my face, which is pretty amusing if you think back to all those times I let you get away with it.”

It was like she was listening to him underwater. The way he was looking at her pushed her over the edge. “How do you know?”

“I’m not gonna tell you.” Brock tilted his head to the side, studying her like one might analyze a piece of art.

Vivienne looked back at him, trying very hard not to cave now.

“I can’t or I’d have to kill you.”

“Don’t try to make this funny,” said Vivienne. “You can’t ‘funny’, Brock.”

Brock ignored her, but the corner of his mouth twitched at the hint of a smile. “I’m not gonna give my trick away, but I will tell you that I’ve fucked up. There’s something about you—it’s hard to describe—But it makes me act the way I do sometimes ‘cause I really don’t know how to handle it and it’s just overwhelming.”

Vivienne saw him looking at her lips, waiting for their response. That hunger was there again, the burning.

“Are you blaming me for all this?” She asked slowly. “It’s a really poor excuse.”

“No.”

Vivienne swallowed and worked her jaw, willing her muscles to keep her steady, willing her voice to work. “It’s really hard for you to say sorry.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Then sorry.”

“For what?”

Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “That was from you to me since you wouldn’t say it. I said it for you.”

Brock sighed. “I told you that you knocked me out once and there’s really no better way to describe it.”

“Hm.”

“I wanna do something about it.”

“That’s nice.”

“Vivienne—“ Brock said, emphasizing his frustration by banging a fist against the locker door beside hers. Everything about the way he said her name gave away what was on his mind and Vivienne couldn’t help but to take some satisfaction from the hint of pleading in his voice.

Vivienne barely kept the smile from her lips. “What.”

“Please.”

“Please what.” She wanted Brock to catch on to the tone in her voice. It was a strange transition to go from wanting to tear her own heart out over him to the sudden desire to taste his lips again, but it sent waves of icy heat through her that chilled her spine and made the tiny breath between them fill with electricity.

She felt brock’s fingers touch her waist and she startled a little with the warmth of them over her bare skin.

“I really fucking like you, Vivienne.”

Vivienne sighed as he moved his palm up her body. He moved closer and his lips brushed hers, but she tipped her head back with a smile before he could kiss her. He felt his fingers push a little more into her skin and she knew she wasn’t doing anything to help his frustration with her; she grabbed his hand and guided it under the cups of her bra to entice him further and drive him to keep going. She felt his lips and then teeth gently pinching the soft skin where her neck and shoulder met and she pushed her fingers through his hair.

“I really like you, too,” she crooned.

“Good.”

Brock pushed her back against the lockers and Vivienne gasped and dropped her lock again, pushing her hand up over his back and drawing his chin to hers. The kiss was as real as a punch and it was a sentence, too.

There was more to this game than she wanted to recognize, but in the moment, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

After all, perspective was everything.


	20. Hellbender Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She likes love, drugs, and sex."-Vivienne's favorite Snoop Dogg  
> What happened in NY (Aliens!) Drugs, and Brock (still pretty sure he can pull that trigger if needed)

Vivienne gasped, pulling air into her lungs. She blinked in the darkness, trying to get her eyes to adjust—everything was pressing in round her, cold over her skin, compressing her body, making it hard to breathe. She saw a light glimmer in a line, racing forward to meet her and that’s when she realized she was in a pool. It was deep and dark and she couldn’t touch the bottom. She kicked her feet when she felt the water start to slide up her neck and she thrashed futilely for a second, trying to keep herself afloat. She looked wildly around her, looking for some sort of way out—her muscles were already beginning to ache in terrifying premature defeat.

There was no way out.

Vivienne felt fear grip her and turn her stomach. There had to be a way. She would find a way.

Suddenly she felt something grasp her ankle from below and yank her downward with inhuman strength. She panicked and tried to kick free from the grasp of whatever lay below the inky waters, but her attacker’s grip was strong and she couldn’t get loose. No more than a fraction of a second later, another hand grasped her, pulling, and then a third.

Vivienne could feel her muscles tire and she tried to cry out, but nothing came from her throat and she could feel the waters coming up around her chin.

With a final yank, she was pulled underwater—it was surreal. The pressure of the weight of the water that increased astronomically as she sank further from the surface was unbearable. She was going to die.

 

Vivienne drew a sharp breath and startled awake. The bright morning light that filtered into the room through the gauzy curtains seemed blinding at first and she squinted until her eyes got used to the glare. She sat up and felt the slow aching memory of alcohol pulse through her head.

She was in a hotel room. It was…she glanced at the clock that sat atop the nightstand beside the bed…seven forty. Vivienne yawned.

The room was spacious—no doubt it had cost a few extra pennies to secure. Deep red carpet and dark wood fixtures along with the creamy thickness of the sheets from the bed that lay on the floor boasted that it was a luxury suite.

She thought back to the night before, putting all of the pieces in place as to what had transpired. Her dream had shaken her, and though she knew it had only been that—a dream, it had still disoriented her to the point that it took a few minutes to remember where she was. Where they were.

She looked over her shoulder at Brock’s sleeping form. It appeared that he had been right—she did ‘knock him out’.

They had left the locker room together the day before and had walked through the howling and clapping STRIKE team who had been waiting outside. Brock barked some warnings at the men and then escorted Vivienne out of the Triskelion and out to his car in the parking lot. They had made a stop at the closest ABC store before turning into the closest hotel parking lot. Brock had slid the clerk his card, his hand on the lower part of Vivienne’s back, and Vivienne had looked around the lobby to make sure they weren’t recognized before following Brock to the elevator.

When they weren’t tangled in the sheets that stuck to their gleaming skin, pushing each other to their physical limits and then collapsing into an intoxicated state brought on by the sheer ecstasy of their sole venture, they were draining the bottle of Jack they had brought and finding new ways to piss each other off and make sweet amends to one another. It had been a whirlwind night—dizzying and unreal.

Vivienne smiled a little and turned over to look at her partner in crime.

Brock was passed out. His arm was outstretched to her, almost like an attempt to keep the night going before his energy had obviously been depleted. He lay on his back, his other arm across his chest, his face peaceful. He’d had at least a shot or two more than her, the result of Vivienne spilling one of hers and then erupting in laughter before he had pushed her back onto the bed. He hadn’t given any indication that he was wearing down the night before, but she knew he had to be tired. His dark hair was mussed, but Vivienne liked it that way.

She crawled over the mattress and lifted a leg to straddle him. He began to stir when she traced a finger over his chest and sat back, feeling the sunlight bathe her bare skin in its warmth.

Brock pushed a palm up her thigh and wiped the sleep away from his eyes with his other hand.

Vivienne smiled down at him. “Hey, Tiger.”

“What time is it?”

Vivienne looked over at the clock. “Seven fifty-five. We need to go probably.”

Brock stretched and groaned. “Mmmprobably.” He raised an eyebrow when he finished pulling the ache out of his muscles, gazing up at Vivienne with a smirk. “But I like this view so much.”

Vivienne snorted. “I like this one, too. It looks kinds like I won an unofficial wrestling contest. Gimme a trophy.”

“A trophy?”

“Yeah,” said Vivienne. She lowered herself over him, liking the way he was smiling, pushing her pelvis against his. She took the liberty of squeezing her own breast, biting her lip tantalizingly. He took the hint and pushed his hands over her chest.

Vivienne smiled with the satisfaction of feeling his warm palms over her and she leaned down to brush her lips over his. “I’m waiting…”

 

 

 

“That is absolutely disgusting.”

Vivienne rubbed her eyes. “Stop, Clint. Seriously. I told you one thing and I didn’t even tell you anything compromising.”

“You told me too much.” Clint handed her the coffee she had ordered. Her name was spelled wrong, as usual. “And it was pretty much implied.”

They walked down the hall at the Triskelion on their way to technology records. Vivienne had gotten suspended, an element that had been revoked around eleven the night before, but nonetheless, she and Brock had agreed that it would be better if she take a day away from the team so it didn’t appear that there was any favoritism or bribery going on. There was, but that was beside the point.

Clint notified Vivienne that he would be working in technology records for a few days, so Vivienne took the opportunity to keep him company as he slaved away through the punishment for being late for work four days in a row a little over a week ago.

It was the typical exchange—the “what are you in for?”. He told her, she told him and Clint choked on his coffee before becoming red in the face.

“Are you five?” Asked Vivienne. “Adults do things like that. You might do stuff like that when you grow up, too.”

“Ew no.” Said Clint. “I fraternize with women my age. I would have to find some baggy old cougar to be tied with you. He’s pretty much like a male version of a cougar. What is that? A sugar daddy? But without the sugar.”

“Chill out,” said Vivienne.

They stepped into the glass elevator and Vivienne pressed the button for the lower levels. She looked across at Clint. Characteristically, he had been late to make up for his late days and she could tell. The hair on one side of his head was flatter than the other side and he had bags underneath his eyes. Vivienne had been so engrossed with STRIKE that she had barely kept up with her friend and what was going on with him. Apparently, he now kept company with some superhero team led by Tony Stark, the billionaire who had pronounced himself to be Iron Man several years back. She didn’t know what the hell he was doing with them, but Fury saw to it that little was leaked about the team’s activities. Vivienne wasn’t horribly concerned—any team under Fury had its right to secrecy, she supposed.

“Stop looking at my head. I know it looks funny.”

Vivienne laughed and looked away. “Fine. Sorry.”

“But really, Vi. That’s nasty. Not only is he like fifty, but it’s a violation of your contract with SHIELD.”

Vivienne sipped on her coffee. “He’s not fifty.”

“Sorry,” said Clint, waving a hand. “My bad. Forty-nine.”

The elevator dinged and they got off. They started down the dimly-lit hall towards the tech rec room. The basement levels smelled a little like old clothes and mothballs. Apparently the whole SHIELD division in DC used to be underground. The lower levels were all that was left of the original SHIELD building and for some reason it had only been slightly renovated since its debut. Someone probably thought it was nostalgic. All Vivienne knew was that the smell triggered headaches and boredom.

Clint swiped his card at the access port in front of the tech rec door.

“You look tired, Clint.”

Clint snorted. “It ages me when you tell me things like that.”

“Oh, stop. I mean it.”

Clint sighed. “You have no idea the level of crazy shit I had to go through in New York yesterday.”

“I don’t really keep up with what you do with Tony Stark and those other guys. What happened in New York?”

Clint paused and turned to look at her. Apparently Vivienne was missing something important.

“Put down the box of condoms and turn on the TV.”

Vivienne’s stomach twisted a little. She wished Clint would just tell her. “What.”

“Alien invasion, nothing big. The Avengers and I destroyed half of New York trying to save it. Like I said, nothing too serious.”

 

 

But it had been serious and SHIELD and everything related to SHIELD changed after that.

There was a new push for better intelligence—smarter and more advanced weaponry that could be ahead of the game before the game had the opportunity to even set foot on the field. Everything was new or it was on its way to being replaced by something more efficient. SHIELD saw a flux of new applicants and the academy had never accepted a larger class before the cadets that enrolled that year.

Everything was geared toward making sure that New York was the first and last time things would get that out of hand. SHIELD had always been proactive about world security and expecting and preparing for the worst-case scenarios, but now it was the sole focus.

The STIRKE team was plunged into a never-ending pursuit of stolen Alien weaponry over the next few weeks. That was all they did. And it really was—day in, day out, over and over. It was infuriating and monotonous. It was like having the same dream over and over and waking up with the frustrating realization that the same dream would be had again. It exhausted Vivienne and though she and Brock spent most nights together, a couple times they were too tired to make the hotel worth it. They traveled the world, but it was the same scenario over and over—some rich asshole didn’t want to give up “his” new toys, so they were forcefully taken from him.

It wasn’t really work for STRIKE, but it was too much work for the other SHIELD teams to handle alone. At least STRIKE got priority when it came to the more difficult missions. I was one thing breaking into a house to find a teenager futzing around with a pistol and having to explain to a frantic mother that they weren’t there to arrest her son and a whole other thing infiltrating the hideout of an illegal arms dealer who had trained mercenaries on the grounds with orders to kill trespassers.

 

Vivienne tilted her head back and gazed at the ceiling. It looked like an upside-down wedding cake. Crystal chandeliers hung from golden chains and the light that came through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows beamed fragments of rainbows here and there around the giant room. When Vivienne had originally imagined the pad of an illegal arms dealer, the room she stood in exceeded what she had expected by far.

They had only just dragged the dirtbag who owned the place out by the lapel of his fancy jacket after he had tried to pull a gun on them. Now he sat in the back of a SHIELD transport with his sobbing wife, who was now cuffed after she had taken to beating her husband.

Vivienne was in awe of the lifestyle. She had broken off from the team to explore the place. “Scoping it out”, she had said, but she really just wanted to snoop around and admire the insanely exquisite bathrooms and the endless nooks and crannies of the house with breathtaking views of the French countryside.

She had to admit, the profession paid if one didn’t get caught, but most of the dealers got caught eventually. Vivienne opened the door to the master bedroom and walked inside, casting a glance at the pictures of tropical vacations and yachts and billionaire hobbies that littered the dresser. She snorted. The wife should have known it wouldn’t last.

She traced her finger along the intricate molding along the wall, looking down at the expensive rug beneath her boots while she walked.

Her finger sank into the wall.

Vivienne pulled her hand back in surprise, squinting at the unusual divot in the molding. She heard a thump come from the other end of the room and she turned around, raising her rifle. Another thump came and Vivienne immediately trained her rifle on a small vanity. The mirror was swinging outward, which contradicted the way the piece looked like it had been built. Vivienne waited while the mirror slowly opened and then she lowered her rifle.

It was a hidden safe.

Vivienne walked forward, pulling out her tiny mobile tech device. She held the little green light over the number pad on the safe and the combination worked itself onto her screen, taking the consistency of the fingerprints on the keys to formulate an accurate code.

Vivienne typed the code on her screen into the safe’s keypad and the door opened with a hissing pop.

There were almost a hundred vials of clear liquid arranged in a foamy case in the inside. Vivienne picked a vial up and studied it. There was a symbol on the top of the tiny cap. It looked like a purple seven.

Vivienne tapped her earpiece. “Hey, guys. There’s some stuff in some vials up here. I don’t know what it is, but it looks important.”

“On my way. Don’t touch it.”

Vivienne pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. Of course Rumlow would volunteer.

She waited for him to come up, holding the vial up to the light coming through the window. It looked like water, but some rich guy most likely wasn’t stowing away water for safekeeping.

She heard Rumlow’s boots outside the door and she turned in time to see him come into the room.

“Check this out,” said Vivienne, holding the vial out to him.

“Hey,” said Rumlow, taking it from her with a frown. “I thought I said no touching.” He looked at the vial itself and then noticed the symbol. “Hm. Well that explains why the guy’s rolling in it,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Seventh Heaven.”

“What’s that?”

Rumlow lowered the vial and looked over at the open safe and all of the other vials inside. “Drugs for the rich. They’re no joke. This stuff is dangerous.”

Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Hm. Darn. And here I am shooting myself up with the shitty stuff.”

Rumlow looked at her.

Vivienne held up her hands. “Kidding. I’m kidding—I swear.”

“We need to pack this up. I don’t know where this guys got his hands on this stuff, but I’m sure we can persuade him to tell us.” Rumlow reached into the safe and put the vile back where it belonged. “Don’t go running your mouth about this, ok, Vivienne? This is for STRIKE eyes and ears only, understood?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Rumlow turned at looked at her squarely. “This is important. No gossip to friends, no chatting to other co-workers.”

“Yeah. I got it the first time, Robocop.”

“Shut up.” Rumlow turned half away from her and tapped his earpiece, letting Rollins in on their discovery.

Vivienne threw a few faux punches in his general direction, but he wasn’t paying attention. She looked back over at the vials. They gleamed enticingly. Vivienne had dabbled here and there in marijuana back in high school, but she had straightened up before heading to the academy and hadn’t dealt with drugs since. She stared off into space, her head drifting into imaginings of what seventh heaven was probably like.

“Better just to leave it to mystery, kid.”

Vivienne looked around at Rumlow. “What? Yeah, I know that. I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“Mhm.”

 

 

Finally, after another week of intercepting the sale and purchase of Alien weaponry, what had started out as a hardly-tamable multitude of threats across the globe eventually trickled to the occasional call and more often than not, SHIELD sent one of their general field teams to deal with the problem. 

STRIKE started warming up again for more specialized missions and Vivienne finally felt like she was finally getting back into the swing of things.

She swung her black duffle bag over her shoulder and pushed open the door to the locker room, walking across the gym after having completed a pretty grueling day of intensive PT. Her legs were sore and she couldn’t wait to get back to her apartment and take a nice cold shower. She checked her phone and noticed that she had received several texts from Clint, who had obviously had a shittier day than she had. Something about Natasha and some sort of disagreement. If Vivienne kept to what had been their usual habit, she would follow up with a text back to ask Clint to go to Charlie’s with her and they would split a loaded fries basket—something to make the other forget their sorrows. She hadn’t been there in a while and she knew she should go—hell, it had been a few days since she had talked to Clint last.

She looked across the gym at Rumlow’s office. She knew she had several options that would determine how the rest of her night would go.

She paused to stretch her legs, catching her ankles behind her back. It gave her a spare minute to decide.

Vivienne made her way over to Rumlow’s office, knocking on the open door when she got there.

Rumlow looked up from his computer. He smirked a little. “What do you want?”

Vivienne grabbed the doorframe and swung a little from it. “Nothing. I just wanted to break some bad news to you, is all.”

Rumlow sat back in his chair. “What.”

Vivienne waved her cell phone at him. “I have friend duty tonight so we can’t have a ‘no pants’ party.”

Rumlow sighed in exasperation. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why do you have to call it that?”

“I dunno. Cause that’s what it is?”

“Who’s the friend?”

“You wouldn’t know him.”

Rumlow raised an eyebrow. “Him, huh? You got a hot date, Donahue?”

“Tch. No. Clint’s seriously just my friend.”

“Barton.”

“Wait. You know him?”

Rumlow looked back at his computer. “I know everybody and everything.”

“Oh, jeez. Here we go.” Scoffed Vivienne. She lowered her voice into her imitation of Brock’s low growl. “‘I could speak fluent Chinese when I was five and I fist killed a man at the budding age of six.’”

Rumlow shook his head. “I never said any of that.”

“’I got the highest score out of my peers on the field entry exam.’”

“I was drunk when I said that. Give me a break, Vi.”

“’Did you know…’” Vivienne giggled as she thought up her next line. She could barely get it out. “’Sometimes at night I put curlers in my hair… because I’m worth it—“

“Ok. You know what? Get out.” Rumlow waved her to leave his office. “You have fun with Cupid. Make sure he puts a condom on that arrow.”

“For crying out—“ Vivienne huffed and cupped her hands around her mouth. “We’re not having sex!” she said loudly.

A few hoots came from the gym and they both looked around to see the rest of the team walking across the gym. Rumlow ran his fingers through his hair, his face flushing a little.

“You deserved that.” Vivienne smiled and leaned over his desk, biting her lip provocatively. “Because you’re worth it.”

“Get out before I pin you to the desk.”

Vivienne saluted. “Sir, yes sir!”

 

 

Brock watched her go. She was a little much sometimes, but that’s what he liked about her.

He turned back to his computer screen after Vivienne left the gym and continued to read the encrypted email Pierce had sent him regarding their find on their last mission—Seventh Heaven, the drug for the rich. It was hardly that.

Before it was ever leaked onto the black market, Seventh Heaven’s original creation occurred in a top-secret laboratory belonging to Typhon, one of the largest Pharmaceutical Leaders worldwide. The drug, known only to officials bearing high enough clearance levels, had gone by a different name when it was created—T7Hydro. It had been created under extremely classified contracts for military chemical warfare purposes, but its affects were far less severe than military officials had been hoping they would be, and so the drug had been rejected.

T7Hydro was then sold on the black market in large quantities by the scientist who had created it and transported to epicenters for unrest all over the world. Before Typhon was able to learn of the illegal dealings within their own staff, the money trails that might have led to the whereabouts of the buyers had since gone cold.

None of this would have been taken to such a degree of concern had Typhon not created the drug under a HYDRA contract. Typhon itself was an extremely successful and cleverly-disguised front for HYDRA, but everything HYDRA worked so hard to build over such a long period of time could be put under investigation if the drug were discovered and traced back to them. T7Hydro was a loose thread and needless to say, HYDRA had been working for years to negate its existence and erase every lead that could possibly trace the drug back to Typhon.

Vivienne’s find had been extremely important. Brock had been so surprised at the massive amount that she had stumbled upon that he had forgotten to mask exactly how important the discovery was and he had dropped its street name thoughtlessly. Only after he regained his head did he make Vivienne swear to secrecy. He knew she wouldn’t run her mouth if he asked her specifically not to, so he hadn’t been particularly concerned about his mistake. Of course, everything was reported immediately to Pierce and now Pierce had emailed him regarding the sort of action he would have STRIKE take.

Brock finished reading the email and rubbed his lower lip with his thumb. Pierce wanted them to chase the trail.

What he was asking was close to impossible, but apparently the dealer they had obtained had already blubbered a few names that just happened to check out. Naturally the interrogators were all HYDRA as well and HYDRA was a bit more persuasive than SHIELD interrogators might be. Normally the dealers they had come across had been relatively hard to crack.

Brock groaned and closed out of the email, shutting down his computer. The screen went dark and he could see his reflection looking back at him. He had begun to shy away from mirrors recently—every line on his face, his brow, the natural curvature of his cheekbones—he looked like his father the way he remembered him. Everything was his father except for his eyes. Those were his mother’s. But that didn’t give him much comfort.

He checked his watch and the date. Twenty-seven years. It was a long time, but Brock knew prison would never be enough. No time between that Chicago fall night and now would change his mind about his feelings for his father.

But that was a matter for later and he wouldn’t let it bother him now. It was unprofessional.

Brock pushed his chair back and got up, grabbing his phone and keys from his desk. He walked over to the entrance to his office and turned off the light, shutting the door behind him on his way out.

He walked across the dark gym, his footfalls seeming too loud in the silent space. He wondered fleetingly why Vivienne had broken the nightly routine they had fallen into to ditch him for Barton, but he dismissed the unease from his mind shortly after it appeared. She wasn’t really his and he wasn’t really hers. It didn’t matter what she did. She was young and he knew that it was highly unlikely that either of them would take what was going on between them seriously. 

He did like her though.

Rollins’ warning seemed to cross his mind every time he thought of her and every time he woke up next to her and every time she laughed the way she did with that little wrinkle that appeared on the bridge of her nose.

He had it under control. He could still pull the trigger if he had to. He could still have her six feet under with a backup alibi if the need ever came.

But so far there was no need, so he didn’t dwell on it.


	21. Hellbender Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm BAAAAACK. Sorry for the long delay!!  
> So it's like this-- Steve just got landed on the STRIKE team and Brock is not happy about it. What better way to test the new guy than throwing him to the wolves on the first day?

Vivienne yawned and sat back against the counter, her eyes half closed. The bubbling sound the coffee maker made mixed with the enticing smell that steamed slowly out of the carafe helped a little, but her head still throbbed and she felt like she might puke again. Three too many shots the night before had come back to bite her and boy, did it bite hard.   
After helping Clint decide that Natasha wasn’t actually shunning him or whatever, Vivienne had been treated to several rounds of celebratory shots from her friend. There hadn’t really been need for celebration since the issue had all been in Clint’s head, but there was no point in telling him that after he had already drained his third beer. The nearest Walmart, of course, had seemed like a good place to explore in a tipsy state of being and so a cab had been hailed. Vivienne barely remembered the drunken ride there or even their spontaneous shopping trip for that matter, but a coffee maker had been bought. She recognized that much when she stumbled out of her room that morning to find it sitting prettily atop her counter. It was shiny and red and it hurt her eyes to look at it.   
The timer beeped and Vivienne stirred from her dizzy drifting. She grabbed a thermos from her cabinet and filled it to the brim with coffee. Only after searching her fridge for milk or cream did she remember that the coffee and coffee maker had both been purchased the night before on a whim and she very likely forgot to buy any other condiments. Whatever. The stronger the coffee the better.   
She snatched her keys from the counter, submitting herself to another day of the usual grind and probably some questioning from Brock about her whereabouts and activities the night before. At least, she hoped that he might ask. The very fact that she was interested in his interest made her stomach turn a little, though, and though she smiled at the familiarity of the feeling, something inside of her chest seemed to lurch against it. She dismissed the conflict with a burning swig of her coffee, grimaced at the stupidity of the act that left her lips tingling, and went for the door before she could think about the full consequences of screwing her boss.

 

“Stop squinting.”  
“I can’t.”  
Brock let his head fall back a little in annoyance. “You’re a treat.”  
“No. You’re a treat.”  
Brock shook his head and went back to sorting through the morning’s emails on his computer screen.   
“What.” Vivienne was leaning tiredly against the wall across from his desk, the edge of her coffee thermos seemingly unable to break contact with her lower lip. “I thought you were flirting with me.”  
“Fat chance.”  
“I would dump my coffee on you, but that would be a waste because I need it more than your stupid face needs it.”  
Brock looked up over his computer at her. “Nice. Now why are you still in my office?”  
Vivienne frowned. “I dunno. Because.”  
“Go get changed for P.T.”  
“What are we doing today?”  
Brock looked at her flatly. “P…T...”  
Vivienne groaned. “Yeah but I don’t want to run. Let’s do a field trip.”  
“Vivienne…”  
“Alright fine. Fine. I’m going.” Vivienne took a long swig from her thermos and shuffled her feet slowly for emphasis as she started toward the locker room. “But not because you told me to.” She threw a cursory glance over her shoulder to see if he might appease her by asking about how her night went, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and went to work typing something.   
The door at the other end of the gym opened then and Vivienne straightened up, turning to see the newcomer enter. She felt something in her chest flutter a little and she did her best not to drop her coffee.  
Hell, who wouldn’t swoon even just a little looking at Captain America?  
She realized that she was staring only after he noticed her standing there. Rogers was dressed in PT attire, his hair neatly combed, his face clean—he looked like a commercial for men’s aftershave.   
“Hi,” he said, nodding at her.   
“Oh hi.” Vivienne snapped out of her daze, smiling. She wanted to walk, but her feet were rooted to the floor.  
It seemed that Rogers didn’t notice her awkwardness, or maybe he did and ignored it for her benefit. What a great guy.   
He walked toward her, looing around the gym. “Remind me of your name?”  
“Don-Donahue.” Vivienne pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose before trying again. “I’m agent Donahue.”  
He extended a hand and Vivienne took it without thinking twice. She hated to think of what might have happened had she realized what she was doing before she did it.   
“Steve Rogers,” he said, smiling. “Apparently I’m supposed to start training with STRIKE today.”  
“I doubt Rumlow knows that.”  
“Does he not?”  
“Well, I mean, I feel like he probably would have said something. Pretty much, it’s like this—There was a bit of a misunderstanding when I started, too, but he’ll get over it.”  
Rogers tilted his head to the side a little. “Isn’t he your commanding officer?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Yeah.” She said. She tucked a loose strand of hair back. “Just don’t take it personally when he yells at you and you should be fine.”  
“Rogers.”  
Vivienne looked back over her shoulder to see Brock emerging slowly from his office. Her SO locked eyes squarely with Cap, ignoring the fact that she was there entirely.   
“What are you doing here?”  
“I…ah, I finished my testing and I’m scheduled to start my training today. Agent Rumlow, right..?” Rogers held out a hand expectantly.   
Brock raised his eyebrows at the gesture, but he took Steve’s hand before things became unusually tense. Vivienne resisted the urge to roll her eyes. What a save.  
“Well I remember having discussed your involvement with the team before, but I hadn’t heard anything from Fury since,” said Brock. He kept his tone cool. “I had assumed that nothing would become of it until I was formally notified, but now that you’re here, it seems I’ll need to readjust some plans.”  
Rogers bowed his head a little. “I don’t want to intrude. I’m not here to throw things off, so please continue on with whatever your original plans were.”  
Brock squinted at him a little and his head tilted ever so slightly to the side. Vivienne sensed a weird tension coming from her SO. She felt her face go red for Rogers as he stood through Brock’s silence and she rushed to do whatever it was that she could to correct the situation.   
“Hey,” she said, patting Rogers’ arm. She retracted her hand immediately when he looked at her. “How about I show you the locker room and introduce you to the men and that way Br—err—Agent Rumlow can have the time he needs to adjust the agenda?”  
Steve looked at Brock and Brock looked at Vivienne. Vivienne shot her SO a look before Steve looked back at her.   
“Sounds like a plan.”

 

“That’s literally the shittiest plan I’ve ever heard.”   
The chopper had just taken off from the landing pad, lifting a cargo of sweaty ill-tempered STRIKE agents into the sky. The dim light from the cockpit threw strange shadows and eerie lighting over the team where they sat in the belly of the machine and Vivienne could barely make out the look on Rumlow’s face from where he sat across from her. She groaned loudly when he didn’t respond and turned instead to Rollins, who sat next to her.   
“It’s just because he’s new or whatever and you guys want to scare him off. He’s fucking CAPTAIN AMERICA. Jesus, and what did the guy ever do to you? He was frozen in ice for like, a long time—many years. This is gonna be, like, traumatic for him probably.”  
Rollins snorted. “Too bad.”  
“Too bad? Seriously?” Vivienne said.   
“Yes. Seriously,” Rumlow finally spoke up. “If he’s gonna be with STRIKE, he’s gonna have to get over it. I don’t want Stripes freezing up in the field.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Well I didn’t get to go on a mission on my first day.”  
“You weren’t trained to.”  
“The dude’s gonna get shot or something. You’re going to be the guy who’s responsible, Brock. Whether you like it or not, he’s part of the team now, too.”  
“Hey—“ Said Brock sharply. “Zip it, Vivienne. I know he’s part of the team. That’s why he’s going to start tonight. If he’s cut out for it like Fury says he is, then we won’t have any problems. Apparently the big dog knows what the team needs. Who am I to question his choice in agents?” Brock smirked and sat back, pulling his phone from his pocket as a means to an end to their conversation.   
Vivienne rolled her eyes and glanced back at the second chopper that followed theirs. Only the occasional blinking light was visible in the inky night. She was embarrassed for Rumlow where he wouldn’t be for himself—she thought he had made a horrible impression on Cap and she felt bad for their new team member. She wondered what the hell it would be like to wake up and be smacked in the face by the twenty-first century. Shitty probably.   
She gazed across at Rumlow and started to recognize his imperfections—they seemed all too apparent in his recent behavior. She hated him a little for not entirely living up to the stallion of a guy she had seemingly built a shrine for in her head.  
What a douche. 

 

Apparently they were going to attend a dinner party. Not that they were technically invited, but Anton Verona had been and he, according to intel, would be arriving somewhere around nine to the gates of the Karlovitch estate. Karlovitch represented a fairly healthy artery in the Russian underground mafia in the United States but, although his head would collect millions from multiple buyers, he was not the prime target. Verona, a big time collector of all things ranging from failed science experiments to weapons of mass destruction, had been sitting at the top of SHIELD’s wanted list for a long time. This was the first time in three years that he had surfaced over SHIELD’s radar and it was imperative that he be brought in for questioning and repossession of stolen vibranium from Wakanda.   
Any SHIELD team could have done it, but since Verona had evaded the radar for so long before, suspicions arose as to whether or not Verona wanted to be found. And if he did want to be found, it was a safer call to send in a specially trained STRIKE escort to the hills in California than to sacrifice a less qualified SHIELD team to be used as a bargaining chip or to be gunned down by Karlovitch’s men. 

Vivienne signaled once with her flashlight. She waited for the response across the lavish greenery that decorated Karlovitch’s back garden. Taking out the guards had been easy since intelligence had been good thus far and the weakest point in the parameter had been breached. Now she crouched beside Crue and Henley, waiting for the flash from Cooper’s light to proceed forward toward where Rumlow and Rollins were since it required them to move through their blind spot. Vivienne wondered fleetingly whether Cooper was paying attention or talking Rogers’ ear off.   
Then the flash came.   
Vivienne looked back at Henley and Crue, nodding toward the dark space before them, and then moved forward silently with the men close behind. They closed on Rumlow’s position underneath an overhanging ledge that was heavy with ivy. Even though Cooper was a talented guy in the field and she knew that he’d have her back, she gave her surroundings a last glance before sinking into the depths of the shrubbery.   
“Hey.”  
Vivienne nodded at Rumlow. “Hey.”   
The moonlight was blocky over his features and when he turned to her, his face was immediately immersed in shadow. “Cooper says the target just walked in. We’ve got an empty room on the first floor two windows down from us. That’s gonna be our best bet for entry. Rollins is gonna lead a team through the garage on the other side so that we have a better chance of being in-the-know if anything happens.”  
“Sounds solid. Brock ‘solid’ Rumlow.”  
“Don’t call me that.”  
Vivienne smirked.  
“Henley and Crue are with me,” said Rollins. “We leave now.”  
Vivienne glanced over to where Cooper and Rogers were covered behind a row of ornamental trees. Rumlow clicked his light twice and the two agents flitted through the shadows towards them.   
“We’ll move in twos,” said Rumlow lowly as they waited for the new arrivals. “Me and Rogers and you and Cooper.”  
“I feel like it might be better if it wasn’t you and Rogers.”  
“You follow orders, Vivienne, you don’t give them.”  
“I wasn’t,” Vivienne dropped her tone lower as the men neared. “I’m just saying—“  
“We just got a light in the original point of entry,” said Cooper into his comm. He and Rogers moved into the darkness with them.   
“Fuck,” Rumlow touched his earpiece. “You hear that, Rollins?”  
“There’s still a plan B, but it’s further from the target and we don’t entirely know how many men are in that house,” said Cooper. “Rogers saw two men, armed, in the room next to the original planned entry—“  
“He saw two men. Doesn’t tell me how many there are.”  
Vivienne shot Rumlow a look.  
“Jesus,” said Rumlow. He took a breath. “OK. Cooper—you and me are gonna go in through there then. Donahue and Rogers, you’re running our backup.”  
“Yes, sir.”   
Vivienne looked at Rogers. He didn’t seem perturbed by Rumlow’s pissy mood.   
“Ok. We’re go then.” Said Rumlow. “Donahue, you follow when you’re clear.”  
“Don’t get shot,” whispered Vivienne.  
Rumlow adjusted the butt of his rifle in the soft spot of his shoulder. “You neither, kid.”  
And then they were gone. 

Vivienne waited, feeling the familiar buzz in her chest as the night really began. She glanced back at Rogers. “How’re you doing?”  
“I’m fine, thanks.”  
The nighttime sounds in the garden seemed louder once Rumlow had left.  
“Sorry it’s so sudden like this.” Vivienne said. She felt like she had to explain for the shitty time Rogers was probably having because of the team. “I feel like you probably shouldn’t have been forced to come on this mission.”  
Rogers shrugged. “I really didn’t have any other plans for the night.”  
Vivienne smiled a little. “That’s doubtful. You’re Captain America. I feel like someone somewhere would love for you to swing by and drop a speech about freedom and patriotism.”  
Steve nodded and looked down at his feet. “Well. I don’t blame you for buying into that reputation. It’s turned into a real knee-clapper back at SHIELD.”  
“Has it.” Vivienne paused, not knowing exactly what to say. “Well I’m sure you probably have a harem of women who are dying to spend time with you…?”  
Rogers smiled at her. “Well, regardless of whether or not there are women, I enjoy spending the free time I have catching up. It takes a while.”  
Vivienne gave him mental props for avoiding the question. “I bet.” She said. “You ready?”  
Rogers nodded, rolling back his shoulders underneath the thick Kevlar of his suit. “Ready.”  
Vivienne touched her earpiece. “Clear and headed to you.”  
“Affirmative.”  
Vivienne pressed to the side of the structure, moving around the corner and then crouching under the windows that cast blocks of light out over the lawn. She was barely aware of Rogers behind her for how quietly he was able to move. They approached the window Rumlow and Cooper had entered through earlier. The latch was still undone and Vivienne lifted the glass noiselessly. Rogers covered her as she hoisted herself through the entrance and dropped deftly onto the carpeted interior of the room. She waited for Rogers to join her and then secured the window behind them. There was a burst of laughing from the down the hall—they both instinctively crouched and moved toward the deeper shadows in the room. Vivienne gestured toward the door and Rogers fell into step behind her.   
She gingerly turned the knob, opening the door ever so slightly, her nose almost touching the wood as she eyed the hall beyond. It was clear for now. She took a breath and then pushed the door open wide enough to slip through. She moved into the hall, her rifle raised and ready, her heart beating against her ribcage. The adrenaline was thrilling.  
She glanced to her left where the lights were lit in the living room and then to her right, where the voices were coming from in what she guessed was the dining room. Soon, according to multiple studies of Karlovitch’s practices, the Russian would take his guest to a back room where goods were exchanged and cigars would be lit. That’s where Rumlow and Cooper waited and that’s where Vivienne and Rogers would meet them and ensure that the target could be smoothly secured.   
Vivienne moved across the hall to a crevice beside a large bookcase. Rogers started to move toward her, but she waved him off and he remained across the hall. He looked at her for an explanation and Vivienne nodded at the other room where the men had begun to push their chairs back from the table. They had switched up the routine. Usually dinner came first and then the meeting. Negotiations must have gone well or terribly, but either way the schedule was thrown. Vivienne prayed that nobody would come down the hall behind her. It had been a stupid decision to move without having waited for the ‘go’ from Rollins, who had his vantage point on the other side of the dining room from her and, consequentially, a much better view of the activities within.   
“Target is moving earlier than schedule—be alert.” Rollins’ voice came over the line. “Karlovitch, Verona, and two securities. Exiting to the drop point.”  
Vivienne pressed herself against the wall beside the wardrobe. Fortunately, the piece of furniture was large enough to conceal her from the passing men and they walked by, conversing in low Russian.   
Vivienne lifted her rifle and watched the first two men walk into the room.  
“NOW.”  
Vivienne squeezed her finger over the trigger and dropped the two securities as the other two men were dragged backward into the room by Cooper and Rumlow. Rogers sprang from his position to cover Vivienne.   
Vivienne looked around at him. “I got it—there are probably more guys in the rest of the house who heard the shots—go help Rollins, I got this.”  
“I’m your cover. I’m not just going to leave you open, Donahue—that’s not how that works—“  
“Hey—go. There’s nobody else here, Rogers!”  
“Hey HEY HEY!”  
Vivienne turned around when she heard Rumlow’s shout over her earpiece, but she didn’t register what was actually happening until Karlovitch tore out of the room with a gun in hand. She heard the shots, she felt them push her back, and then the corner of the wardrobe connected with the back of her head.   
She thought she heard her name before everything snapped into blackness.


	22. Hellbender Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne isn't quite back in the game yet, but she has some re-focusing to do. Nothing like a bullet to the chest (or three) to make you rethink your path in life and maybe make a few changes. Vi lays in bed, Clint is sweet, Brock has lady troubles and Rollins just wants his friend back. Enjoy!

“Well hey there.”  
Vivienne’s eyelids were heavy and it took an unusual amount of energy to convince herself that she should open her eyes.   
Clint was reclined in a chair beside the bed she lay in and there were dark spots under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. Vivienne smiled a little and started to take a deep breath, but she stopped when her chest convulsed painfully and she winced, holding back a cry.   
“Hey, hey, easy…”  
“What’s going on?” Vivienne’s throat hurt and her lips seemed dry. Every word reverberated around her chest and stimulated tiny pricks of ache under her ribs that she had never felt before.   
“You’re in SHIELD medical,” said Clint. “They flew you back from California yesterday.”  
“Oh my God,” said Vivienne, realization slowly beginning to dawn over her. “The mission…Why am I here…? Why are you here…?”  
Clint snorted. “Well I’m here because I care about you. You’re here because you took three bullets to the chest. Two of them were stopped by the vest and the third one mostly was, but it collapsed your lung and then somehow you got a concussion.”  
Vivienne looked at him. It seemed surreal and she felt like she should be doing something—she felt uselessness and guilt pull at her immediately. She had been out for the rest of the mission and she had done nothing to help her teammates.   
“Oh my God.”  
“You said that,” said Clint. “But look, it’s ok, Vi. The mission was a success regardless of you deciding to get shot.”  
Vivienne looked at him wiltingly, the gravity of the situation making it hard for her to see the humor in his tone.  
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding…jeez.” Clint reached for his cup of coffee that sat on the bedside table.   
Vivienne pressed her palms to her eyes. “How do you know the mission was a success?”  
Clint swallowed his coffee and set his cup back down. “Rumlow came by. He said you’d want to know.”  
Vivienne felt something pull at her heart. “You talked to him? What else did he say?”  
Clint looked at her. He seemed to be thinking about how to tell her what had been said to him and Vivienne knew he was fighting the bias he had against her SO. “He said that he was sorry and that he took care of it. I don’t know what that means but he looked at me like he was staring straight into my soul.” Clint paused. “But hey, it seemed like he was genuinely concerned about you and you’re in no shape to argue so, for once, I’m not going to say anything about whatever it is between you two.”  
“Stop fishing for praise.” Vivienne raised an eyebrow and grinned at Clint. “I’m glad you’re here, though. It’s not like I’m dying or anything, but it’s good to see that you survived your hangover.”  
Clint smiled a little and nodded. He picked up his coffee, but then put it back down when he felt the weightlessness of an empty cup. Instead, he pushed the it back to join two other Styrofoam cups further back on the table. His weary eyes said more than his lack of words and Vivienne could see that he really had been worried about her, though maybe he didn’t say as much. She wondered fleetingly how much time he had spent waiting for her to come back, sitting in that chair, watching her monitor. His clothes, wrinkled with a small coffee drip stain, suggested that he had been there through the night and the idea squeeze at Vivienne’s heart. It seemed like suddenly a window had been opened and she had been allowed a glimpse at the real world that was going on around her past the haze of her relationship with Brock and her involvement with the STRIKE team. The grip on her heart got tighter when she recognized how much she had been neglecting—she had really forgotten how much she cared about him.  
Vivienne swallowed the knot that threatened to rise in her throat and smiled at him. There was nothing she could do to immediately repair whatever damage she had inflicted, but she could work to make things better and she would. She had to ignore everything that was written in the way he looked at her in order to maintain her composure and she did, trying to remember where they had left off, since her mind had spun off into some abyss while thinking about him.   
She snapped back into the present, forcing everything back. Her voice barely sounded like her own when she spoke. “How are your footie pajamas? Didn’t you buy those when we went to Wal-Mart the other night?”  
Clint squeezed his eyes shut and slowly covered his face with his hand in shame. “Hey,” he muttered. “They’re actually really warm and awesome, so…”  
“We’ll have to have a Brainz and PJ night.”  
“Sure,” said Clint. He smiled back at her, his eyes searching hers. He lingered around his pause, his humor hovering in that spot that usually made Vivienne feel so warm. “Maybe when you get out of here.”  
“Which will be…?”  
Clint shrugged. “I dunno, Vi. The doctor said he wanted you to stay a little longer since your usual program is pretty high-energy. He wants you to take it easy on that lung before you get back into it.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes, but she was glad for the promise of a break. She felt like she had been beaten with a crowbar and she knew it would be a little while until she could put her lung back through its paces with PT.   
“Hey,” she said, catching his gaze. “Again, thanks, Clint. You didn’t have to be here, but I’m glad you are…” She watched for his response, praying that her first step might have some sort of impact.  
The corner of Clint’s mouth pulled into a smile. “Of course, Vi. Seriously. I’m just really glad you’re ok.”

 

 

Rumlow pushed the button to the elevator. He had just come from Pierce’s office—he would have much rather had his flesh torn slowly from his body. He had needed to break the news to Pierce at some point about Rogers and it hadn’t seemed necessary to sound the alarms until things were actually certain. Now that the guy had a mission under his belt with the STRIKE team, it seemed like it would be a safe call to alert the bigger dog. It really wasn’t his fault that Cap joined their team, but Pierce seemed to be taking it personally and he hadn’t hesitated to make the fact known to him. Everything would be complicated now, but really there was nothing that they could do to get Cap off of the team that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Regardless of whether or not he or Pierce liked it, Cap wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.   
The elevator door opened with a ding and Rumlow stepped in, lost in thought. He remembered that he needed to actually push another button after a minute of intense staring at the dimming cityscape beyond the glass and he turned back around and jabbed the ground floor indicator.   
He knew that he should visit Vivienne—he hadn’t seen her since she had gone into the ICU when they got back from California. He also knew that now wasn’t really the best time; he was angry, frustrated. Not just with Pierce, but also with Rogers. After Vivienne had been shot and right after he had run out into the hall and had been about to shoot Karlovitch before Rollins had been able to detain him, he had ripped Rogers a new one. He knew Vivienne having been shot hadn’t really been Rogers’ fault—Karlovitch had gotten away from him and Vivienne should have been paying attention—but he supposed, after a night spent staring at his ceiling instead of sleeping, that he didn’t want to feel whatever feelings might come if he actually allowed himself to come to terms with the fact that he was partly to blame for Vivienne’s condition. The fear of feeling those feelings—the idea that they were even on the horizon somewhere within him—that’s what kept him from going to see her even though he had heard that she had regained consciousness. He didn’t want to subject himself to caring for her like that. She…She was…  
The elevator dinged and the doors opened to the first floor. He spun his keys around his finger and then caught them in his palm. He didn’t know what she was to him. He was afraid of losing her and yet he knew if things ever got to the point where he would need to kill her, he would still be able to. But there was something to be said for everything that was wrapped into the way she looked at him and the warmth of her body when they slept together—the best sleep he’d had in years.   
He knew he wouldn’t see her until she was out, not because he was too busy—and that would be his excuse—but because he couldn’t afford to invest himself further into her for fear of losing sight of everything he had spent decades to build with HYDRA.   
He would do something when she got out. Something to make up for the lost time. Dinner maybe. He would think on it.  
He swiped his security card though the slot to check out and there was a metallic click as the doors to the exit opened accordingly.   
The evening was cool and there was a slight breeze that meandered through the parking deck as he walked to his car.   
“Brock!”  
Rumlow turned, looking around for whoever had called his name. Rollins jogged toward him from a few spots over.  
“Hey!”  
“Hey, Jack. What’s up?”  
Rollins slowed as he approached. His shirt was still sweat stained from PT and he gripped a waterbottle in one hand. “I was going to ask earlier, but you were on your way to see Pierce—how did that go, by the way?”  
Rumlow looked at Rollins flatly. “It didn’t. Now what were you going to ask me?”  
“Cooper and I were going to buy a few rounds at the split keg—“  
“Yeah I appreciate it, Jack, but I can’t tonight,” said Rumlow sharply, cutting across his friend. He fidgeted with his keys as a means to tell Jack indirectly that he needed to go.   
“I hadn’t even asked you yet.”  
“You didn’t really need to.”  
Rollins looked a little taken aback by Rumlow’s short temper, but he didn’t let it stop him. “Look. I know Pierce is on your ass about everything right now and I just figured you would want a drink—it would be my treat. It’d be good to have you since it’s been a while…”  
“You hadn’t asked.”  
Rollins looked at Rumlow and Rumlow sensed his awkward inability to decide what to say next. “I’ve been busy—“ he offered.  
“Usually you take the initiative—“  
They both abruptly stopped talking when they realized they were talking over each other, which only lead to another awkward pause.   
Rumlow sighed and gave up, rubbing the back of his neck—one of his tics. “How about I’ll meet you and Coop around ten? That sound good?”  
“Yeah,” said Rollins. “Unless you have something else you need to do…”  
“Jack,” said Rumlow. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been absent recently and I’m just wrapped up in a lot of stuff right now. I’m not trying to piss you off or make things shitty between us. You’ve been there for me and I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t return the favor. I’ll be there at ten.”  
Rollins didn’t look entirely convinced, but he nodded anyways.   
Rumlow unlocked his car. “Ten. First round’s on you. I heard you say it.”  
Rollins pointed at him. “Ten. I hope you like 1800.”

 

Rumlow’s flat was deeper in the city—it took up a quarter of the eighth floor of a regally prominent apartment building filled mostly with wealthy older individuals and the occasional younger adult with a fat trust fund. He rarely invited anyone over; apart from Jack and Cooper, few people had any idea where he lived. He guessed that most probably wouldn’t have pegged him for the type who preferred a more formal setting, considering the scope of what his career asked of him. HYDRA paid its loyal supporters well and though he wasn’t frivolous with his income, he didn’t intend to come home from a long day of killing people to a crumbling apartment, a broken sink, and a leak in the roof. He deserved better.   
Rumlow pulled into his assigned spot in the parking deck beneath his complex and grabbed his duffle bag from the passenger seat, opening his door into the echo-y fluorescent garage.   
As soon as he shut his door, he turned around and almost knocked down his elderly neighbor.   
“Woah—!” he said, dropping his duffle to grab her arm and steady her.   
She looked around at him in surprise and then, after recognizing him, she smiled brightly. “Oh! Brock! Why, I didn’t see you there! How are you?”  
Rumlow smiled curtly at her. “Fine, Bea. You?”  
Bea elbowed him with her bony arm. “Better now.”  
Rumlow shook his head at the inevitable hinting and tried not to show his amusement so that he wouldn’t offend her. He picked his duffle up again and nodded at the elevator. “Going up?”  
“Yes! Are you joining me?”  
“Well I’ve done my part exercising today, so I don’t see why not.”  
“Oh good! You should relax a little more often,” said Bea. She pinched his bicep, “I don’t think these can get any bigger!”  
Rumlow felt his face redden. He locked his car and they went to the elevator together. Bea lived across the hall from him with at least ten cats. Mr. Bea had passed away fourteen years ago of a heart attack and Bea had moved into the complex to start the next chapter in her life alone. It was apparent that she had been quite the fox in her day—she was a washed-up jazz singer with as many suitors as she had cats, but she never failed to rap on his door around Christmas with giant Tupperware containers filled to bursting with Christmas cookies.   
She also never failed to come at him with flirtatious gestures as subtle as blows from a sledgehammer.   
The elevator music was the same as it always was—Velvet Scene by John Coltrane. It had become a sort of conditioned stimulus for him, not unlike Pavlov’s dogs. He was home, he could relax—he could set down his pager and allow his shoulder muscles to loosen up.   
“What’s wrong, Brock?”  
Rumlow snapped out of his daydream—he hardly knew what he was even dreaming about, or maybe he did and that’s what had elicited the question from Bea.   
He glanced at her, but she was staring with such concern that he could hardly keep her gaze. “I’m fine, Bea.”  
“No, you’re not. I can tell. Call it feminine intuition. What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing.”  
“It’s a woman.”  
“It’s none of your business, Bea.”  
“Fine. Sulk, then.”  
Rumlow raised his eyebrows and gave his neighbor a look. “You think that’s gonna make me tell you anything?”  
Bea smiled, cocking her head to the side. “I know my charms don’t work on you Brock, but I also have a feeling that you have a hard time letting any girl in. Look at you—you work yourself too hard and you’re so secretive. No wonder you’re having lady troubles.”  
Brock hoisted his duffle on his shoulder a little. “I don’t have ‘lady troubles’.”  
The elevator dinged at the eighth floor. As soon as the doors opened, Rumlow made his escape and started down the lowly-lit hall to his flat. He fished his keys out of his pocket and sorted through them for his house key. He was fully aware that Bea had paused outside her door and was most likely standing there, her arms crossed and her chin up, watching him.  
He found his apartment key and glanced over his shoulder. “Show’s over.”  
“I think the show’s just beginning. I also think you need to invite your mystery woman over. It would do you well to have some company,” Bea finally flashed him a smile and opened her door. “It’s time you stop being such a lone wolf and invite some people into your life, Brock.”  
Rumlow nodded, but the gesture was more to quiet her than it was in agreement. “Night, Bea.”  
“Mhm. You think about what I said.”  
Rumlow opened his door just as his neighbor disappeared behind hers.


	23. Hellbender Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So...I'm sure you knew it would happen eventually...Or does it? Stay tuned for the next chapter!  
> Cap is more loyal than he should be, rumlow is a dick, clint has sourpatch kids, and Vivienne...well, she really just needs to take a breather.

“I’m a fucking rainbow.”  
Cooper took a long draw from his cigarette and then tapped it so that the ash tumbled off of the end. He exhaled, smoke curling from his lips and nostrils, and grinned. “Show me.”  
Vivienne poked him in the chest. “Nice try, smart guy. I’m not gonna flash you my rainbow tit.”  
Cooper chuckled and backed up against the railing of the fence Vivienne was leaning against. They looked across the field to where Rumlow was barking at Henley in an attempt to get him to climb the rope tower faster.   
The spring morning was crisp, but it was good weather, so the team opted to train in the SHIELD outdoor compound. It was Vivienne’s first day back, but there wasn’t much she was allowed to do. Her lung was still healing and the doctor didn’t want long-term complications that might result from throwing herself back into the grind too quickly. Rollins jokingly threatened her with double the amount of planks when she returned to full health, but Vivienne wished that she could fast-forward to feeling better.   
Not much had changed since the mission, except that now it seemed that Rumlow was going even more over-the-top to find flaws in Rogers. Vivienne didn’t blame the guy at all for her injury—it had been mostly her fault for not paying attention. It was unfair for Rumlow to act the way he was toward the new STRIKE member, but recently she hadn’t had the chance to call him out on it. Brock had been distant to say the least. She had been waiting for him to call her, but the call hadn’t come. When she heard from him, it had been through someone else and it had never related to anything between them. Vivienne hated to feel like she needed something more from him, but she wished that he would just pick up the damn phone so that she could remember what it felt like to wake up in his arms again. It had been almost a month.  
“Glad you’re back.”  
Vivienne was yanked out of her daze by Cooper’s remark. “What?”  
“I said I’m glad you’re back, girlie. The team’s been missing something.”  
Vivienne smiled at him, shading her eyes from the sun that had started to peek out from behind the clouds. “That’s nice of you to say. I’ve missed you guys, too.”  
“Yeah,” said Cooper. “That and Brock is less of a dick when you’re here. Seems you’ve got some sway with the bossman.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Sway.”  
Cooper took another draw. “I wasn’t gonna get into the nitty gritty. That’s y’all’s business.”  
Vivienne watched Brock throw down his clipboard and start yelling into Henley’s face.   
“Sure.”  
“You know Cap hasn’t been invited to participate in any missions since you were put up in the hospital.”  
Vivienne looked around at Cooper in surprise. “What? Why not?”  
Cooper shrugged and tucked a long strand of honey hair behind his ear. “I dunno. We’ve been doing a lot of busts recently. Rumlow says it’s just not Cap’s forte, but I think mostly he’s pissed about you getting shot.”  
“That wasn’t Cap’s fault.”  
“Does it matter?” Cooper flicked the rest of his cigarette into the disposal beside him and pushed himself back off the fence.   
“So wait, STRIKE is still hung up on the Seventh Heaven thing?” Vivienne was trying to picture what the hell the STRIKE team had been doing while she had been gone. “Isn’t that a job for the cops?”  
“Hey,” said Cooper lowly. “I’d probably quiet down if I was you. Plus, it’s really not your place to ask those questions, short-stuff. We get orders, we carry them out. That’s our job. Now I gotta head back.”  
“Fine,” said Vivienne. She crossed her arms and watched Cooper jog back across the field toward the rest of the team.

 

Vivienne pushed open the door to the locker room and walked toward the back corner where her things were. She undid her lock and pulled out her civvies as she pushed down the back of one of her sneakers with her heel. She sorted through her spotify playlist and set her phone down when tinny music started to erupt from the speakers.   
A groan came from across the room on the other side of the wall of lockers. “Awww come on! Play something good, Donahue.”  
“Shut up, Cooper! I’ll play whatever the fuck I want.”  
“I’ll break your phone.”  
“I’ll break your wrist if you touch it.”  
“Jesus, shut up, Cooper.” Apparently Rollins had decided to weigh in.   
“What, you like this shit?”  
Vivienne smirked to herself as she listened to the conversation. She could picture Rollins’ face getting red with the sudden attention.   
She undid her belt and let her loose black tactical pants fall to the floor.   
“Hey, Vi—“  
Vivienne jumped and turned around to see Brock standing across from her. “Jeez. Hey.”  
Brock’s eyes lingered on the elastic band of her underwear before they traveled slowly up to hers. “Hey.”  
He stared at her.  
Vivienne didn’t know how inviting she wanted to be. It had been a while, and the time apart hadn’t been entirely her fault. “You need something…Sir?”  
Rumlow’s eyes narrowed a little at her tone.“I…didn’t get your mission report from the last mission yet, so whenever you get around to it…”  
“Oh yeah,” said Vivienne. “I’ve been in the hospital—I think the doctor said that I had been shot or something, but if you need a doctor’s note…”  
Rumlow didn’t say anything. Vivienne pulled her shirt on and pushed her fingers through her hair. She snorted when she noticed that he was still staring at her. “It’s a joke.”  
Her remark didn’t seem to have much of an impact on him from the outside, but she had pissed him off and she knew it. “If this is funny to you, Donahue…”  
“Tch. Am I laughing?” Vivienne turned around to pick up her phone. “I’ll get you that report. You’ll need something to do tonight.”  
She didn’t need to look at him to know that she had gotten her point across. She could feel the irritation coming off of him in waves. When she turned back around, she gave him a smirk and then pushed past him on her way out of the locker room.   
She knew it would hurt a little to put him through her bullshit, but he deserved it. She had to wait weeks to see him in person—there was nothing that could have really prevented him from coming to visit her if he had actually tried. It was selfish of him to expect her to roll right back into the sheets with him. She wanted him to just fucking talk to her and yet, when he did, it seemed to just make things worse.  
She pushed the locker room door open and walked across the gym.  
“Donahue, wait!”  
“Oh, piss off,” Vivienne muttered. She kept walking and wrenched open the door at the other side of the gym. She heard the door open behind her after she had gotten no more than ten steps down the hall and then the footfalls of someone jogging to catch up.   
“Hey, Donahue—“  
“Get lost Brock.” Vivienne whirled around, expecting Brock, but finding Rogers. She could feel her cheeks flush. “I—uh hey.”  
“Hey. Sorry if I startled you.”  
Vivienne blinked at him. “I’m fine. It’s good for me. In my line of work, I should be used to it by now.”  
Steve nodded with a curt smile, but Vivienne could sense some underlying tension. There was an awkward pause in which they seemed to look everywhere but at eachother. Finally, Cap broke the silence.   
“Look.” Steve sighed and looked down at the drab blue-grey carpeting on the floor. Vivienne could tell immediately that he wanted to be serious and she bit her lip, trying not to be weird. It was hard when she knew what the team was putting him through. She could guess what he thought he needed to say to her—he hadn’t spoken a word to her since she had gotten back from the hospital either.  
“It was my fault—you being in the hospital and everything—and I just want to say sorry.” Steve finally looked at her. “I know words aren’t going to change what happened, but I hope you’ll forgive me.”  
Vivienne stared at him. “Why are you apologizing?”   
“I feel like it’s necessary after what my actions—“  
“Jesus. Stop.” Vivienne held up a hand to emphasize her point. “Please tell me you’re not really letting him get into your head.”  
Steve looked at her warily. “What do you mean?”  
“The alibi for my accident—the one Brock’s been drilling into everybody’s head. It’s my fault more than anything. Hell, it’s partly Brocks fault, too, so stop buying into his shit.”  
Steve looked skeptical. “I’m not sure…maybe you don’t remember—“  
“Oh, please,” said Vivienne. “I’m twenty-three. I’m not that old that I forget things and the concussion really wasn’t that bad. I just kinda blacked out for a second, but that’s beside the point. The point is that for whatever reason the STRIKE team is making your time here a personal hell. They did the same for me, so I get what you’re going through. It’s amateurish and it’s not fair, but that’s what they do and Brock is really the worst about it.”  
Steve blinked. “You know Rumlow is your commanding officer…”  
“Dear God!” Vivienne said, raising her voice a little. “I’m allowed to have opinions. Of all people, I should be allowed.”  
“What do you—“  
“Ugh. Forget it.” Vivienne became frustrated all over again. She wished the guy might join in on her Brock rant, but it seemed like he really was missing the opportunity. Steve seemed too focused on respect and loyalty and all of that bullshit. How could he have the humility to ignore all of the STRIKE team’s negativity towards him? Vivienne didn’t know if she was frustrated about Brock and taking it out on him, or if she was jealous of him for having the strength to be so selective about the things that he let get to him and frustrated that she might be the only one having problems with his situation. Either way, she was done and she didn’t want to dedicate any more of her energy toward trying to be friendly or solving problems that maybe didn’t even exist in Rogers’ world.   
Vivienne just wanted to leave. She inhaled, giving Steve a last once over before she hoisted her duffle in her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

“And he just walked back into the Gym I guess, ready to bend over to be team-fucked by Brock and the rest of them.”  
“Wow. Thanks for the mental imagery. I needed that.”  
Vivienne picked up her water bottle and saluted Clint informally before tipping it back. She had cooled down since that afternoon, but recounting the story forced her to think about all of it again.   
They stood in one of the indoor ranges. Clint was nocking his last arrow, his eyes on the target far across the other side of the enclosure. Apparently he was an extraordinary marksman, something Vivienne might have learned sooner had she actually spent more time with him. She was glad that he had caught her before she had left the Triskelion. She had been in a terrible mood—angry, confused. Now she was slightly less angry, still confused, but mostly everything was better. When she had seen him waiting to catch her before she left, her mood brightened considerably. He had offered her an alternate to going home and slouching in front of her TV with beer for company and he had baited her with sourpatch kids, the keys to her heart. They had talked about catching up on Brainz together and Vivienne told him how much she had missed his dog. Everything had been said and done with the intention to bring them back together, but regardless of whether or not it was working, it also added weight to the pull that was hanging on Vivienne’s heart. Part of her wished that she could go back and do so many things differently, but the other part knew that everything that had happened to her had been purposeful. She hated that—the realistic part of her. Every time Clint looked at her and every time he smiled or made her laugh, it hurt a little more knowing that she still had obligations to reality and the life she had chosen for herself. She would probably lose him again, but she would sure as hell try not to.   
She gazed at the back of his head, wishing that she could think of something to say that could sum up what she wanted to say to him, how to explain everything…   
She watched him point at the target downrange.   
“How much you want to bet I can split that other arrow down there with this one?”  
Vivienne snorted, screwing the cap back on her water. It could definitely wait. “Tch. Nothing. I learned my lesson last time, asshole.”  
“And have I received that 75 inch TV yet? No, I don’t think I have.”  
“I’m poor.”  
“They pay you on the STRIKE team. Probably better than what I get paid.”  
Vivienne walked over and stopped a few feet behind him, putting her hands on her hips to watch his draw. “All of my money goes to rent, gas, and alcohol.”  
Clint let the arrow fly and it shot across the range, splitting down the middle of the shaft of his first one. He turned around with a smug look on his face.  
Vivienne contorted her face into a gross, over-exaggerated impersonation of his. “Uhurhurhur! Lookit my arrow skillz. Chicks dig me.”  
“Oh shut up. I bet you couldn’t even make the target at that range.”  
Vivienne let her mouth hang open in mock offense. “You underestimate me, Clint Barton!”  
“All talk.”  
“Oh, please. Let me check out a bow and it’s on.”  
Clint shook his head. “Use this one. That way it’s fair.”  
“Oh my Godddd. I get to use your thspecial bow??”  
Clint handed the weapon to Vivienne. “I’m starting to re-think it already.”  
Vivienne took the bow and went over to where Clint had a quiver of arrows sitting. The range seemed longer than she had initially perceived while she had been watching him shoot his other arrows and the smile shrank from her lips a little when she squinted at the target. “I think it’s actually further away now.”  
“Just shoot.” Clint walked back around the railing that separated the cubbies from the range and snatched his water bottle from where he had set it. “What are your plans for after work, Vi?”   
It was getting late and soon the ranges would be closing, but they had a few minutes before the lights would be shut off. Clint leaned over the railing, propping himself up on his elbows and watching Vivienne pull the bowstring back to her cheek once she had nocked her first arrow. “Don’t lock your arm.”  
Vivienne unlocked her arm. “I know.”  
“I was just saying.”  
“Sure.” Vivienne let the arrow fly. It shot out across the range and Vivienne watched breathlessly as it skimmed over the side of the target. “Fuck. I don’t know, I hadn’t given it much thought.”  
Clint chewed on the cap of his water bottle, squinting at the result of her marksmanship. “You have a good arm for this. A little to the right and then down a bit and you would have had it.”  
Vivienne shot a frustrated glance back at her friend. He shrugged it off and went back to mauling his water bottle cap.   
“So nothing with your ancient contraband fuck boy?”  
Vivienne had begun to lift the bow again, but she dropped her aim, sighing in exasperation. “Jeez, Clint. Give me a break.”  
“Hey. It’s a fair question. Tell me it’s not.”  
“Would you go back to middle school and grow up before you come back? Please?”  
Clint made a face and threw his hands up.  
Vivienne lifted the bow again, barely taking aim before she let her arrow fly. It cut through the air and buried itself much closer to the middle of the target.   
“See?” Said Clint, “That was a lot better.”  
Vivienne showed Clint her middle finger.  
“What was that for?”  
“That was your answer.”  
Clint pressed his lips together and tossed his water bottle into a nearby trash can. He sauntered back around the rail to meet Vivienne, who handed him back his bow. “Good job.”  
“Stop, Clint. This is literally the first time I’ve picked up a bow since high school.”  
“I meant it, Vi, cross my heart. Also, sorry for the jibes about your guy, it’s just low-hanging fruit, you know?”  
Vivienne bent to grab her bag from the floor. “I don’t really care. I’m not really talking to him right now anyways.”  
“What? This is news to me.” Clint grabbed his quiver and nodded toward the range for Vivienne to follow him while he went to retrieve his arrows. They walked over the polished floor, their shadows shattered into fragments of varying depth by the fluorescent lights that hung overhead. “So what’s going on?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “I really don’t know. I mean, the whole time I was recovering he didn’t talk to me, like, at all. And then today he tried to pretend like all of that weirdness never happened. And I was like, fuck no.”  
Clint shook his head. “I told you the guy was a dick.”  
Vivienne looked across at her friend, but he didn’t really seem to have anything else to say on the matter. She decided she would leave it at that. Before, she had overloaded the poor guy with her relationship issues. Now, trying to mend things between them, she didn’t want to shove it all back in his face again. She was still hurt by the way Brock had treated her and she wanted to talk about it, but that could be saved for a different day.   
“How’s Nat?” Vivienne remembered him having been involved to some extent with Natasha Romanov a while back, but she hadn’t prodded him since and he really hadn’t talked about it much.  
Clint shrugged. “She’s good. We’re, uh, taking a break or something right now.”   
Vivienne listened for some sort of sadness in his voice, but she didn’t hear it or maybe she didn’t want to. For some reason, the only thing that pushed itself to the top of her mind right now was the coffee stain on his shirt while he had been there with her in the hospital.   
They reached the target and Vivienne helped Clint pull all of the arrows out of the material.   
“But everything is ok between you two still and stuff?”  
“Yeah,” said Clint. “I mean, I haven’t seen her in a while, but yeah.”  
Vivienne felt immediately guilty about having been so distant from him for such a long time that she hadn’t even known about what he had been going through. It bubbled up inside of her while she wrenched the arrows out from where they had been buried, threatening to burst to the surface. She had been a shitty friend. He had been there, coffee stain and all and she had been holding out for a guy fifteen years older than her who couldn’t even find the time to make an appearance.   
Clint reached for the last arrow, but Vivienne grabbed it before he could, pulling it out with more force than was necessary. The other arrows had been his, but the last one had been her shot and it wasn’t as deep as she had been anticipating. She staggered a little in surprise, but Clint caught her elbow.  
“Easy.”  
Their eyes locked and Vivienne almost felt a little nauseous with sudden nerves.  
“Clint listen—“ She looked up at him, unable to stop the words from spilling out of her mouth. “I’m really sorry about everything. I’m not just talking about Nat—“  
Clint shook his head. “Vi, there’s nothing to be sorry about—“  
“Shut up. There is. I’ve not been there and you—you’ve always been there. That’s not fair to you.”  
“Vivienne—“  
“You’re like that one constant I can count on and I feel awful that I’ve put you through all of my shit.”   
“Hey. You’re here. I’m not asking for anything else. I’m just glad you’re here.”  
Vivienne looked at him, searching his face. “I want to be here. If this happens again—jeez I dunno—just punch me,” she touched the tip of her nose. “Just one big punch right here.”  
Clint swatted her hand away. “Hey, stop that. I’m not gonna punch you.”  
“Please,” said Vivienne. All of the things she had kept back were coming forth now. “I don’t know why this has been so hard for me to maintain—this thing between us. I don’t want to work so hard that I forget what hanging out with you is like and I don’t want to have to get shot every time I need a reminder about how much I care about you.” Vivienne paused, her mind racing to catch up with her. “That would just be unrealistic.”  
“And it would probably hurt a lot.”  
“Yeah it would,” said Vivienne. “But I have to have something cause I never want us to go through this again.”  
“I care about you, too.”  
“Just do something then.”  
“I—“  
“Clint just seriously. Please do something. Maybe not a punch, but—”  
“Fine.” Clint stepped to her suddenly and pressed his lips against hers, pulling her to him with his free arm. Vivienne dropped the arrows she had in her fist, her hands open in surprise. She didn’t really think about it, but she hesitantly pushed her hands over his shoulders and then behind his neck.  
Everything was so silent that the electric buzz that came right before the lights cut off seemed irreverently loud. Vivienne barely realized that the range was dark when they finally broke their kiss, but everything was backwards now and the light was the last thing on her mind.


	24. Hellbender Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forgiveness, understanding, and coffee cups. Steve wants to get to the bottom of what STRIKE is all about. He's had a weird feeling about them from the start. Fury plans on putting Cap to use, whether Rumlow agrees or not.

Vivienne stared at her alarm clock. It seemed like it had been ten minutes since the last minute had passed. It was three in the morning and she hadn’t been able to sleep at all. There was too much on her mind. Everything—everything that she ever thought she’d need to worry about, everything that struggled for her attention in her head all of the time—all of those thought were warring with each other and it made her temples pound. She was tired, but her brain was too active to sleep.  
She went back over it all again. She was pissed at Brock—she still wanted to be with Brock, or at least she thought she did, she thought she would mend things with Clint, but then Clint kissed her.  
She was barely aware of the way she traced her bottom lip with her finger when she thought about it all. She had kissed him back.  
She tried to urge herself to get a grip. The situation needed careful consideration before she leapt into the new uncharted realm before her. She didn’t think the night would end like that when she had walked into the range the day before.  
After they had kissed, Clint had apologized. Vivienne had said not to. They couldn’t see each other’s face because of the darkness of the range, but they had stood there for a moment wondering whether or not they should do it again. Vivienne had decided that it wouldn’t really be the best coarse of action. Instead, she bent down to pick up the arrows she had dropped. She needed time to think and thank God her head was on tight enough that she hadn’t rushed into things. She did really care about Clint, but the kiss had caught her off guard and she wasn’t entirely sure if that’s what she wanted or not. As much as she hated herself for admitting such a weakness, she still reserved a spot in her heart for Brock, too. Though she was mad at him still, she knew he must have had his reasons—he was that kind of guy and she liked that about him. She liked him.  
But that didn’t change the fact that she and Clint had locked lips with some shared intent.  
She had felt the awkwardness that had descended between them when she handed Clint his arrows and as she said goodnight before walking out of the doors. It had felt like the right thing to do, leaving him there, but she also knew that walking away wouldn’t help in rekindling any sort of friendship between them.  
She didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to have done.  
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do

Then she remembered and she pulled her laptop off of her bedside table, flipping it open and setting up a new document to begin her mission report.

 

 

Vivienne was sitting in one of the SHIELD conference rooms, a stack of plastic cards in front of her. Rollins was sitting on one side of her and Fury on the other, each with their own stack of cards. The cards were numbered from one to ten and they were bright green. Vivienne looked up at the lecture podium where Clint was setting up a karaoke remix of Super Freak. He was wearing platform disco shoes and because of it, Vivienne’s fingers lingered over the ‘8’ card. Then he started singing ad wiggling his legs. His voice bore remarkable resemblance to Rick James. Rollins held up a card. The singing got louder.  
Vivienne snapped awake with a sudden panic. Her phone was going off, her ring tone, Super Freak, was on its last repeat before the call would be dropped. She snatched her phone off of her dresser and swiped the answer button, hurriedly pressing her it to her ear.  
“Hello?”  
“Where the hell are you, Vivienne??”  
Vivienne’s heart skipped a beat when she heard Rumlow’s tone and she looked over at her alarm clock. It was nine-thirty in the morning. She was supposed to have been at work at seven. She leapt out of bed, pulling her hair through her fingers while she looked wildly around for where she had set her uniform the night before. “Ohmygod. I am so fucking dead! I’m on my way—I swear! Why didn’t you call me sooner??”  
There was a pause on the other line before Rumlow flatly responded. “I did. This is the fifth time I’ve tried to call you.”  
Vivienne yanked her shirt up from the floor and tried to put it on, and then  
remembered that she was talking on the phone and that made it difficult. “I swear, Brock. I’m not intentionally late. I was having this really weird dream and Rollins was in it—“  
“Save it, Vivienne. I needed you here two and a half hours ago.”  
Vivienne groaned. It was going to be one of those days. “I know. I’m sorry. And I know sorry doesn’t cut it, but give me like twenty minutes with traffic.”  
“You have ten.”  
“Oh come on—“  
But Brock had already hung up and Vivienne was left jumping up and down trying to shimmy into her black tactical pants. 

 

As soon as she was cleared at the entrance gate, Vivienne sprinted toward the hall that led to the older gyms toward the back of the building where STRIKE met. It had been drizzling outside and the precipitation flattened her hair and caused it to fall into her eyes. The combination of her running, trying to blow the hair out of her eyes, and her duffle bag swinging wildly over her shoulder must have been a sight to see, but she didn’t have time to pay any mind to whoever decided to stop and gawk at her along her way. She hurriedly swiped her card several times at the last portal, cussing under her breath before she jogged the last few meters.  
As soon as she reached the gym, she punched open the bar on the door and made her late entrance. She stopped short when she noticed that Brock had the team at a line up. He had turned to look over his shoulder at her and the rest of the men didn’t bother to make her feel any less uncomfortable as they watched her, clearly judging her for her tardiness. Cooper started a slow clap as Vivienne’s face began to redden and she headed for the locker room doors, but Coop didn’t get any other takers, so he popped a toothpick in his mouth and avoided eye contact with Rumlow, who had turned back to shoot him a searing look.  
Vivienne made her way to the back of the locker room. Her lung was killing her. Every time she took a breath it felt like someone was digging their finger into a purple bruise on her chest. It was making her irritable, something she didn’t need at the moment. She tried to calm her breathing, but her embarrassment did little to help.  
She started shoving her belongings into her locker. She hadn’t brought the right attire and she had just brought home her other pair of PT shorts to be washed, so she was going to have to improvise. Her duffle bag finally wedged into her locker, but her box that held her knife set tumbled out and she fumbled it before finally catching it and shoving it back into her its place. A hairbrush consequentially managed to fall from some unseen corner and it clattered to the floor. Vivienne looked down at it, exasperation boiling up inside of her and causing her throat to constrict in order not to cry out of pure frustration. She sighed, catching hold of her locker door, and leaned against it, unable to believe that she could embarrass herself like this, especially after everything…  
She heard his boots as he walked into the back where her locker was and she heard the locker room door shut behind him, but she didn’t want to look at him.  
“What’s your problem?”  
Vivienne shook her head, clenching her jaw in an attempt not to let her eyes start stinging at that tone.  
“I asked you a question.”  
“Nothing.”  
“Bullshit.”  
There was a pause.  
“Donahue—“  
Vivienne finally stepped back and looked up at Rumlow, praying a tear wouldn’t fall. She was getting overwhelmed by all of the thoughts that tried to factor themselves in when she looked at him. “What do you want me to say?”  
Rumlow seemed to recognize her look immediately and it hurt Vivienne even more to see his brow soften a bit for her sake. It seemed like he had probably had a spiel planned, but he had obviously abandoned it.  
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Vivienne after a moment. “I’m good. Sorry I’m late.” She grabbed her sneakers from her locker and shut the door.  
“You’re not supposed to be running, Vi, you know that,” said Rumlow. The drastic change in his tone made his words seem fake or unusually sensitive. “Are you ok?”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Stop.”  
“Come on, Vi. I was pissed you weren’t here on time, but I’m not trying to kill you. I know that lung probably hurts.”  
“God, stop already, Brock. All of this ‘caring’ is going to kill you if you aren’t careful.”  
Brock clenched his jaw, but Vivienne looked back at him with an eyebrow raised, ready to shoot down whatever stupid defense he had for himself. It turned out he had none. This was shaping up to be a week of surprises.  
“I know what this is about,” he said. It sounded unnecessary coming out of his mouth, but what else was he supposed to have said?  
Vivienne looked up at him, searching the depths of those eyes that had always rendered her breathless. He had never seemed quite human to her; he belonged in some strange category amongst demigods and demons.  
And yet she also knew that he was living and breathing like she was.  
“I don’t think you do…” she said, “I know I have pretty much no experience with all of this STRIKE stuff compared to you and I’m sorry that I’m not entirely the weapon you told me I should be when I first started here…” She took a breath and glanced at the ceiling, trying to find the words she wanted before she looked back at him. “I blacked out like a pussy, I know. I fucked up hard and I messed everything up…” She gritted her teeth before she went on, trying to keep her emotions in check. “But you know, when I gave everything I had, even though I screwed it up for you, when I constantly give you everything I have every fucking day that I work here and you—you can’t even be bothered to come down off you high horse for one minute to acknowledge that I do that for you—? It hurts, Brock.”  
Vivienne could see the confusion on Brock’s face and it occurred to her that maybe he had never considered that he could possibly have been in the wrong at any point in their relationship. It tore a little at her heart to read him that way—it implied that maybe they never had been on the same page as each other. She stepped closer to him, but he didn’t step back. He looked down at her, eyebrows drawing together. Sympathy? Anger? Now, Vivienne wasn’t entirely sure she was ever able to read him in the first place.  
“Where were you?” she prodded. “I know it sounds fucking insane, but I would feel so much better about all of this if you would have come by and told me that I had done ok or, hell, even that I had done a shitty job. It sounds selfish, but I’m having a hard time believing that I matter to you or that whatever the hell is going on between us matters.”  
Brock looked stricken. His lips were parted, but no response was on the verge of them. He didn’t seem to know how to emotionally respond. Vivienne didn’t care. She had said what she wanted to and that was enough for her. He could take it or leave it or do whatever the fuck he wanted with it.  
“It’s messed up,” she said. She felt a tear slide down her cheek but she pushed it away with her palm, looking across at the lockers beside her. She didn’t really know why she was crying. She was stressed from being late, torn about the way she thought she should be feeling toward him. “All of this brainwashing that goes on in SHIELD, on this team…You’ve made it a requirement for me to make sure that I know I’ve done ok for you. It’s stupid. Yeah, it sounds more stupid after I’ve gone and said it. But you probably don’t care. I don’t care.”  
“Vivienne,” said Brock lowly. “Listen to me…”  
She felt him touch her neck and as much as she wanted to back away from him, she couldn’t bring herself to.  
“You matter to me. I wanted to see you. I really did. But it’s because you matter to me that I couldn’t.”  
“I’m not in the mood for trying to figure out what you’re saying.”  
“I’m saying, Vivienne, that it wasn’t my intention to piss you off. When you got hurt, all I could think of was you and I can’t afford that, Vivienne. You know that. I have four other guys I have to worry about, too, I can’t break my pledge to SHIELD and my obligations because I’m losing my head over my—my—over you getting shot.” Brock paused. “It sounds harsh, but I feel like you know where I’m coming from. When we started this between us, I thought we had an understanding.”  
Brock was waiting for her to answer. Vivienne was applying everything that he had said to their time apart. She had hoped that he would give her an answer that would make her forgive him. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t think she ever really had the intention of severing things between them. She just wanted to scare him like he had scared her, take away the feeling that everything was alright just for a little while so that he might experience that same feeling of treading deep water without a lifejacket or a way out in sight. She had meant what she said, though. She had always felt like a dog that needed praise for doing something right for him every time she performed admirably or punishment for performing terribly. When she had been kept in the dark for so long, she had been craving some sort of feedback. Was this the feedback now? Vivienne weighed her options, taking everything into consideration. She looked back at him. ”We did. We do. I understand. That makes sense.” And it did. She didn’t know why she had to make such a big deal about it. Brock wasn’t even really hers, just as she wasn’t really his.  
“”whatever the hell is going on between us”, as you so poetically put it, does matter to me, Vi,” Brock said. “And I thought we had pretty much made it past the point where I needed to tell you that you were doing ok because you continue to perform on a level that exceeds my expectations, but if you want me to clap for you…”  
Vivienne smiled and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Stop. Jokes don’t suit you.”  
Brock pushed his fingers back through his hair; he seemed tired from all of the emotional exertion. “Are we good?  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “I feel so fucking stupid and I’m sorry I’m late. I just overslept my alarm. I’ll stay later if you want so that I can make up the time.”  
Brock snorted. “No, that would cut in with your time with me tonight—that is, if you want to come over. I’m making dinner…”  
Vivienne looked at him warily. “You’re inviting me to your house? And you cook? Are you being serious?”  
“Deadly.”  
“Sure,” said Vivienne. “I had plans to murder a poptart when I got home since I didn’t have breakfast, but that sounds good, too.”

 

Steve Rogers pushed open the doors at the end of the gym and walked out into the silent hall. He was the first to leave, but he had places to be.  
The routine with STRIKE was getting old. It was bad when he had first joined the team with all of the constant tension between him and Rumlow, but he could handle that. Now it was worse; Rumlow didn’t even acknowledge that Steve had anything to offer the team and Steve would find out the day after that the team had gone on missions without him. The only reason he had joined SHILED was so that he could make a difference. He wanted to stand as a force for the people—a person uncorrupted by political or social power who might help rekindle trust between SHIELD and the public, something that had seemed to have been lost through the decades. He knew that everything that had been given to him was being wasted while he sat around waiting for the STRIKE team to get back from their missions.  
He knew that Rumlow was pissed about Donahue having been shot, but he also knew that they both knew that Steve wasn’t to blame. All of this aggression coming from this stranger toward him made him wary and it kept him cognizant about how Rumlow proceeded as the leader of STRIKE and what it was, exactly, that he was doing that Steve felt like he wasn’t ever intended to be a part of.  
The only person on the team that didn’t seem entirely swept up into Rumlow’s lead was the youngest and newest member before him, Agent Donahue, and that was strange enough—the unusual chemistry between the STRIKE leader and Donahue made Steve uncomfortable and he didn’t know why. Just that day Donahue had arrived late and Rumlow had spent close to thirty minutes in the locker room with her alone before they both remerged, no visible repercussions for Donahue’s tardiness at all. That just wasn’t the way Steve was used to seeing things run.  
Everything about the elite group gave Steve a weird feeling. They were cold, aloof, and didn’t seem capable of acknowledging his existence without Rumlow having done so before them. They almost seemed inhuman.  
Steve was beginning to have his fill of STRIKE’s bullshit. It really needed to end or he needed to be transferred to some other group where he could make more of a difference and go home to his apartment at the end of the day feeling accomplished.  
Steve walked across the lobby of the Triskelion and over to the other end where the café and the elevators were.  
“Cap!”  
Steve stopped and looked around for whomever had called his name. Clint was emerging from the café, a tray with two cups of coffee and an éclair in his hands.  
“Clint,” greeted Steve with a smile. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a little while.”  
Clint shrugged. “I’ve been busy. Does everyone miss me?”  
“I haven’t talked too much to the team since New York and Stark gets too frustrated trying to text to me, so I’m a bit out of the loop with the avengers right now.”  
Clint nodded. “I hear STRIKE has been keeping you busy, too.”  
Steve cocked his head a little to the side, wondering how Clint had known that he was wrapped up with STRIKE in particular. He had thought that the transfer was supposed to have been kept between him, the team, and Fury.  
“Relax,” said Clint, seeing his expression. “I’m not going to tell everyone that THE one and only Captain America is now part of the elite SHIELD STRIKE team. I’m very confidential like that.”  
Steve raised an eyebrow. “Thanks? How did you hear?”  
Clint looked back at Steve. He had been trying to look around him in the direction from which Steve had come. “I have a, uh, friend on the team.”  
Steve found that hard to believe. “One of them?”  
“It’s Vivienne Donahue. You probably know her. Like twenty-three-ish, short blonde hair, sarcastic as hell.”  
Steve looked at him. “Yeah I know Donahue. I’m interested to know what you know about her—that whole team gives me a weird feeling and I can’t get a read on them.”  
“They’re just dicks,” said Clint. “Especially Rumlow. That guy is a piece of work. Vivienne’s normal, though. She’s pretty great. Hey when did you clock out today?”  
Steve caught Clint looking back over his shoulder and he looked down at the tray in Clint’s hands. One cup had clearly been used already, but the other cup was still full and a rivulet of coffee ran around the inner divot of the plastic top. “Vivian” was written in sharpie across the sleeve.  
Steve felt like he was missing some crucial pieces to some nonexistent story that seemed to matter so much to everybody. He looked back at Clint and gave him a curt smile. “It was probably ten minutes ago now,” he said. “I’ll see you around, Clint.”  
“See ya, Cap.”

Steve stood in front of Fury’s desk, his hands clasped behind his back. The director was leaned back in his chair, his one good eye narrowed in thought as he mulled over what Steve had told him.  
Steve had recounted that day and then he had listed all of the times Rumlow had gone off on missions without notifying him and finally, he went over the mission that had left Agent Donahue hospitalized. There were no embellishments and there was no bias in his recount; he wanted the Director to decide for himself whether or not he was getting strange vibes for nothing, or whether he was actually being singled out of the STRIKE team. He weighed heavily toward the latter himself, but he didn’t allow it to sway his stories.  
“Well,” said Fury finally. “I can say with some confidence that I knew something like this would happen.”  
Steve’s eyebrows drew together and he shifted his stance a little. “What do you mean?”  
Fury sighed, getting up from behind his desk. He walked around it and then leaned against it, standing directly across from Steve. “Rumlow’s an old dog. He’s been here for a long time and he does things according to how he wants them done, or how Pierce wants them done. Pierce…well I have no fucking idea what Pierce thinks he’s doing or if he knows about all of this, but frankly, I’m tired of trying to push against this wall alone.”  
“You’re saying that Rumlow only wants me off the team because I’m new? I really don’t think that’s the case, Sir.”  
“Me neither,” said Fury. “And I’ll look into it, but in the mean time, I’ve been working on the problem since before we decided to meet tonight.”  
He nodded past Steve and Steve turned around to see a woman standing just past the door inside Fury’s office. He hadn’t heard her come in, but he hadn’t necessarily been listening for another newcomer. He had been too wrapped up in recounting his STRIKE experiences.  
“Cap, this is Cassidy Bradshaw. Bradshaw is an Agent of OBSIDIAN.”  
Steve nodded at the woman, who smiled in greeting and extended a hand. Steve took it. “OBSIDIAN? I haven’t heard of your organization before…”  
“It’s the offsite black-ops security and intervention division of intelligence analysis and neurolinguistics,” Bradshaw said coolly. “We touch the stuff that SHIELD legally can’t.”  
Steve looked back at Fury, doing little to hide the distaste in his tone. “SHIELD works with mercenary groups now?”  
“OBSIDIAN isn’t a merc group,” Bradshaw said sharply. “We’re an organization set aside from the government, but we work to protect the people just the same. We aren’t for hire and our contracts bind our loyalties to our one party.”  
Steve looked back at her. “Sounds like mercenaries to me.”  
Bradshaw didn’t seem phased by his persistence. She looked across at Fury who had been watching the exchange with his arms crossed.  
Fury inhaled and pushed himself off of the edge of his desk. “Bradshaw will be working as a liaison between OBSIDIAN and SHIELD. OBSIDIAN has information that they’re willing to share with us in exchange for a closer look at what they need to do to keep SHIELD string-free.”  
“So you’re keeping SHIELD’s hands clean,” said Steve, summing it up for Bradshaw, who really didn’t need the summing. “I thought that SHIELD was better than this. They shouldn’t need to rely on companies like yours.”  
“Rogers,” Fury said, cutting firmly across the tension in the room. “This is how we are going to find out whether or not there is something we need to know about the STRIKE team. They’ve been operating directly from Pierce for all of these years and I hardly know what their agenda is, which concerns me. Whether you like it or not, Bradshaw here is going to help you get answers to your questions. I’ve already assigned her a place on the STRIKE team with you—both of you will be reporting tomorrow. Rumlow may not like it, but he’s got no choice this way.”  
Bradshaw watched Steve, most likely preparing for any other objections. It was really beyond him to make such decisions, even if he didn’t agree with Fury’s terms.  
“I apologize for making such a poor first impression,” Steve said to her. “It’s just that in my experience with SHIELD, we didn’t have to rely on outside parties to clean up our messes.”  
Bradshaw smiled fleetingly. “No apologies necessary, Captain. I’m not here to make you uncomfortable. I’m simply here to observe and offer my assistance.”  
“I understand,” said Steve. There was no point in arguing anymore.  
Fury clapped his hands. “Good. Now that both of you are on the same page, I’ll expect that things will start running smoothly between you and you can get some work done on STRIKE.”

Steve exited the elevator and started back across the lobby of the Triskelion. He wouldn’t go home feeling any more accomplished that day. If anything, he would feel like he had been pushed back further from achieving anything again. In reality, it really wasn’t entirely different from being in the army—taking orders, even when he knew there had to be a better way to get things done. He was still trying to figure out how he fit into this time and how he needed to adjust to continue to do what was intended for him when he became Captain America.  
The lobby was relatively empty since it was past the time most of SHIELD clocked out for the day. He looked around at the coffee shop where he had seen Hawkeye earlier. The line was shorter and there were fewer people meandering around sipping on their lukewarm beverages. Steve had been about to turn the corner on his way out for the night, but something caught his eye.  
He didn’t know why he saw it, since it was small and alone sitting on top of one of the closest tables, but it stood out to him for some reason—the coffee cup that Clint had been holding in the tray. The one with “Vivian” scribbled on the side. He looked around for Clint, but he was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Agent Donahue. He approached the table and hesitantly picked up the tray and the cup. The cup was still filled with coffee, although its contents were now cold and worthless.  
Steve walked over to the trash can and threw both of them away. His mind was plunged back into the strange, foreign abyss that it had been submerged in since he had joined STRIKE. He was missing something, but he would figure out what it was.


	25. Hellbender Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *This one is intended to be a mini chapter, since I wanted to split the action in the next coming chapter from this one. It's still important, just not too long!  
> Brock and Vi finally have a real date. From whisking Vi around the living room to revealing his passion for Opera, Brock seems to be full of surprises. (Sorry both of those sentences together sounded like the worst ever synopsis for an episode on netflix that only managed to snag one star). Enjoy!

The elevator dinged and Vivienne laughed when she pulled away from Brock’s kiss. He had just picked her up from her apartment and they had sped across town and deeper into the city where Brock’s flat was. Vivienne usually didn’t venture so far into that part of DC. It was too rich for her and she didn’t have the time or money to make a trip there worthwhile.  
Vivienne had since gotten past her frustrations toward Brock that she had had that morning. She would have been ashamed to admit that she didn’t need too much coaxing to go back to him again, even though things had lingered in the grey area between them for a little while. Rumlow had a knack for saying the right things. It didn’t mean that Vivienne had entirely forgiven him or that she had forgotten the ‘misunderstanding’, but it was easier pushing the matter to the side and allowing herself a small chance to be a little carefree, even if it was just for the night. She thought that she had deserved as much. On their way up in the elevator, she had put her fingers through his hair and had lightly traced the outside of his ear with the tip of her tongue, loving the way he closed his eyes, pleasure pulling one corner of his mouth into a smirk. She hopped out of the elevator before his lips could touch hers, though, and now he followed her out into the hall, a little miffed at her teasing.  
Vivienne took in the luxurious atmosphere like a glass of good champagne. The walls along the hall were cream colored with dark décor and mocha trim. The floor-to-ceiling windows at both ends of the hall were pink with the rays of the setting sun and they sent fractals of color over the walls like splashes of paint. Vivienne looked back at Brock, biting her lip and giving him a sultry look that she knew would drive him crazy. He grinned and nodded at the door coming up on their left.  
“This is me,” he said, pulling his keys from his pocket.  
“Oh good,” said Vivienne, leaning against the wall beside the door. “I’m getting hungry…”  
Brock looked across at her, his eyes lingering on her lips. “Me, too.”  
Vivienne grinned. “Wanna taste, Tiger?”  
“Oh, God, do I…” growled Brock. He pulled her hips to his by her belt loops, forgetting entirely that he was supposed to be unlocking the door. “I’ve wanted you all day.”  
Vivienne cocked her head to the side, giving him a feigned sympathetic look. “All day?”  
“Yeah,” said Brock. He drew closer slowly until their noses almost touched. “All fucking day.”  
“Good.” Said Vivienne. She reached up and touched his lips with her finger. “Good boy…If you waited all day…” she leaned in, barely brushing his lips with hers. “then you can wait a little longer.”  
Brock looked at her in annoyance when she backed away from him again. “Jesus, Vivienne. Fuck you.”  
Vivienne winked at him. “If you’re lucky.”  
Brock shook his head and unlocked his door.  
Brock’s flat was clean, neat, and it smelled a little like cologne with a hint of evergreen. Floor-to-ceiling windows cast light over sprawling modern dark leather couches and a plush carpet that spread over the living room part of a hardwood floor. The kitchen was impressive—dark marble counters and gleaming cutlery adorned the space—a wine rack in the corner boasted several bottles of expensive Italian reds.  
The painstaking attention to detail and perfection in the arrangement of everything around Vivienne intrigued her. The organization was definitely Brock’s signature, but the good taste surprised her. She hadn’t necessarily doubted that he cared about such things, but it had never occurred to her that he might take an interest in decorating his apartment to look like something out of an Esquire magazine.  
“Wow,” said Vivienne, looking around the place and taking off her coat. “This is a lot nicer than my cheap-ass place.”  
Brock took her coat from her and hung it up by the door. “Well, I make enough to live comfortably, so why not?”  
Vivienne snorted. “Comfortably.”  
She walked over to the giant window and looked out across the city. The rush hour traffic was finally calming down and the evening hovered like a dark blanket, edging in as the sun went down.  
Vivienne turned around, half expecting Brock to be there behind her, but instead he was in the kitchen pulling two wine glasses from the cabinets.  
“Pinot noir or merlot?” called Brock.  
“Mmm pinot noir sounds amazing right now.”  
Brock pulled the cork from one of the bottles and filled the two glasses as Vivienne walked over to lean against the bar top on the other side. She watched as he pressed the cork back into the top of the bottle before walking around the counter to hand her a glass.  
“To a very late dinner that I owe you,” said Brock, extending his own glass to her.  
Vivienne smiled and touched the lip of her glass to his with a clink. “I’ll cheers to that.”  
They tipped back their tumblers as a start to the evening just as the last rays of the sun sank below the horizon.

 

Clint sat in his car. He had taken the key out a while ago, but he hadn’t made any efforts to get out yet. He knew Lucky was waiting for him in his apartment and he felt bad for making him wait longer, but he couldn’t seem to find the energy to unfasten his seatbelt.  
He didn’t really know what to think. The night before had been a complete surprise to him. He didn’t know why he had kissed Vivienne—it had just seemed like the right thing to do at that moment. He didn’t know whether he regretted it or not. He liked her. She was one of his best friends, but he had always harbored affection for her that went a little beyond that, too.  
She hadn’t said anything to him since that last night. He had waited for her after work and he’d even bought a cup of coffee for her to test the waters, but she had never made an appearance. He hadn’t necessarily told her that he was going to be waiting, but he had figured that it might be a nice surprise for her and that it would be a good conversation starter.  
He needed some sort of advice and usually, when he needed advice, he went to Vivienne, but that wasn’t an option this time.  
He wondered if he should text her, but then he felt like saying something in person might be more appropriate. But what should he say?  
Vivienne would tell him that he was overthinking everything. He needed to give it a rest for now. Things still hadn’t cooled down for him, so he needed to take some time until they did and then he would figure out what to do next.  
Clint nodded, realized that he was nodding to himself, and immediately undid his seatbelt. Any longer in the car alone and he would have been voicing his concerns out loud.  
Clint opened the door to his apartment and tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter. He heard Lucky’s paws before he saw him—his dog was always overjoyed when Clint came home for the night. He spread his arms open and Lucky jumped up to greet him.  
“Hey good boy! What have you been up to tonight?”  
Lucky started licking his hands.  
“What’ll it be tonight, Lucky? Pizza or mac-n-cheese?”  
Lucky recognized Clint’s words and sat down on the floor at attention, ready to receive either.  
“That’s what I thought,” said Clint. He went over to the pantry and pulled out a box of mac-n-cheese. “Just you and me again tonight, Boy. Vi is probably just busy, but we’ll see her soon. Nothing to worry about.”  
Lucky cocked his head to the side.  
Clint rubbed behind his ears and then went to fetch a saucepan from the cabinet.

 

“So. When you were born…” said Vivienne, scooping the last bite of mushroom risotto onto her fork, “Why did you get all of the skillz?”  
Brock looked at her from across the table. “What?”  
“When I was born, I got none of the skillz, like, at all. I really can’t cook very well, my decorating taste leaves much to be desired, and well, I mean, you’re my boss, so that’s pretty obvious that you’re doing something better.”  
Rumlow set his fork down. “I’m only the boss because I’m older and I’ve been there longer than you. As for the cooking and decorating, my mother really was a bigger part in that than I was. The risotto recipe is my mother’s.”  
“It’s phenomenal,” said Vivienne. “Tell your mom that she outdid herself through you.”  
Brock smiled a little, but it seemed to have a bitter aftertaste and he got up, collecting his plate and silverware. He walked over and took Vivienne’s, too. Vivienne lifted her wine glass to her lips, draining the last sip of pinot noir from the bottom. Maybe he and his mother weren’t on the best of terms or something, but she figured that it would be best to avoid mentioning her for the rest of the night.  
She got up from the table and carried her glass over to set on the bar before she went over to the living room while Brock loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. It was beginning to rain a little again; raindrops chased each other lazily over the giant windowpane in crooked patterns, leaving beads of water in their wake.  
Somewhere down below a siren wailed. Vivienne moved closer to the window to look down at the street below. She could feel the chill of the night coming off of the glass and surging over her bare feet.  
She was aware, suddenly, that there was music, and she snapped back out of her daydream. She looked around to see Brock pointing a remote at a fancy sound system.  
“What is this?”  
Brock looked at her. “Just listen. No questions. You have a habit of misjudging things.”  
Vivienne didn’t know whether or not she should be offended.  
After setting the song he wanted, Brock walked over to her and took one of her hands, placing the other on her lower back.  
Vivienne smiled up at him. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked sweetly.  
“Dancing with you. Now move your feet.”  
Vivienne tried, but it was hard to catch which parts she was supposed to be moving. “I don’t think this James Bond Villain music is supposed to be danced to…”  
“Vivienne.” Brock sighed and he readjusted his hand on her back. “Just follow my lead. Let me move you.”  
Vivienne stepped on his toes and snorted. “Whoops.”  
Eventually, she was trying so hard to hold back a burst of laughter that she forgot entirely that he was attempting to dance with her and she let go of him, backing up to cover her grin with a hand.  
Brock raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to take this seriously, then, huh? Alright.” He reached for the remote.  
“Brock, hey!” Vivienne tugged herself back to him by the lapel of his shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m obviously not very good at this, but you can still show me…?”  
Brock sighed, but eventually his mouth twitched into the beginnings of a smile and he took her back into his arms again. “Fine.”  
They started to dance again.  
Vivienne looked down at his feet, trying to copy him.  
“Stop looking at my feet. Look at me.”  
Vivienne looked up into his eyes, trying not to laugh at the concentration that was evident on his face. She moved instinctively closer to him, breathing in his smell—Listerine, cologne. The contact between his shoulder and her hand that rested there made everything so real. They were grounded in the moment and to Vivienne, even though this was the last thing she might expect from him, it made everything so much sweeter. She felt a chill run over her skin and then a warmth immediately bloomed in her chest. This is what it felt like. She looked into his hazel eyes. She wouldn’t trade the feeling for anything.  
Brock smiled a little. “Better, Vi. You’re doing good.”  
The music eventually slowed to a stop.  
“Your footwork could use some serious improvement, Vi.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes, pushing away from him. “So could your attitude.”  
Brock clicked his tongue. “I didn’t say it was hopeless.”  
“Thanks for saving my pride.”  
Brock approached her and she looked up at him, pretending to still be offended. He ignored her attempt to fool him and pressed his lips to hers. She kissed him back passionately, pushing the memory of having kissed another the night before out of her mind. It wasn’t that moment’s problem.  
When their lips parted, Brock touched her chin. “Whatta ya say, Kid? You want to try the dancing thing again?”  
Dancing wasn’t really the first thing on Vivienne’s mind when thinking about things she wanted to do with him at the moment. She twisted her lips. “How about in twenty-ish minutes? I need a break.”  
“Good idea.” Brock went over to his stereo system and reached up to the shelf above it, his fingers skimming over the antique records he had arranged in alphabetical order there. “I have a vintage Puccini vinyl that I picked up the other day that I wanted to listen to if you want to bring that bottle of wine over.”  
Vivienne fetched the wine, trying not to let her pouting be too evident. She hadn’t shimmied into her sexiest lingerie to sit around and talk about dead Italian musicians. She sat down on the couch and propped her feet up onto the coffee table. Brock didn’t notice—he was too interested in the back of the paper envelope the record was inside of.  
“You know,” he said. “It seems very overpowering at first—this music—but if you really listen, you can hear the story in their voices and it makes sense. I’m not trying to be all poetic or anything, but you should give this a chance, Vi.”  
He slid the record out and handed the envelope to her. He tapped the paper while he got up from the couch. “Look at the date on this. It’s older than dirt, but I bet it still sounds like it was recorded yesterday.”  
Vivienne took the envelope, but she was watching him. Something in the way he spoke, his tone of voice—it made her feel a little guilty that she wished that they were in the bedroom by now and not sitting around listening to opera. He was passionate—he was talking about something he truly loved. She hadn’t thought that he was capable of expressing such feelings, but for the umpteenth time that night, he had surprised her again. This part of him, not necessarily pertaining to music alone, but the emotion…it meant more to her than he would probably ever know that he revealed it to her. 

He was talking about recording companies or something when he sat back down on the couch. She didn’t really care. She leaned into him, closing her eyes and savoring the moment for what it was worth to her. Everything.


	26. Hellbender Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> STRIKE gets another new recruit and there are mixed feelings about OBSIDIAN's involvement. Steve makes a friend and Vivienne finds out that Bradshaw might not be as friendly toward her as she thought she would have been. Everyone eats lunch and gossips while Rumlow tries to solve mysteries.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”  
Brock looked at Steve Rogers squarely, his tone had been level. He was having a hard time maintaining whatever shard of calm was keeping him from punching Rogers from across his desk. It was bad enough that he had do deal with the star-clad dick in the first place. “I said ‘no’. Is there a problem, Rogers?”  
Rogers’ eyebrows knit angrily. “Yes. There is a problem and I think you already know what it is, so save me from explaining it to you.”  
Brock clenched his jaw. Pierce wouldn’t like it if he snapped and decked Captain America in his office, but Pierce also wasn’t going to like the sound of what Rogers was telling him either.   
“Cut the attitude, Rogers. Unless we’re forgetting the chain of command here, you need to remember that I’m your superior.”  
Rogers pinched the bridge of his nose. “You seem to like to hear yourself say that.”  
“Get out of my office.”  
“OBSIDIAN is a fact, Rumlow. Bradshaw is here now. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Fury.”  
“Oh don’t worry, Rogers, I’ll take this to Pierce. All I need is another new face fucking things up and getting my agents shot.”   
Rogers’ gaze was firm, but Brock wasn’t backing down. He nodded past the Captain. “There’s the door.”  
Rogers stood there a minute longer before he recognized that it would be pointless trying to argue any further. He turned and exited Brock’s office. As soon as he was gone, Brock inhaled and placed his hands behind his head, closing his eyes. Pierce was going to skin him alive.   
“Who the fuck is that chick in the locker room?”  
Brock turned around to see Vivienne standing where Rogers had been a minute ago. When she looked at him, her mouth pulled into a tight frown.   
“What’s up with you?” she asked, noticing that he was upset.  
“Everything. Please don’t talk right now.” He turned back around and stared at the wall. “I need a moment.”  
“Okay…”  
Something was slipping. Something somewhere within the operation was drawing unwanted attention to his team and he couldn’t afford everything to come crashing down around him. Not after all of these years of work.   
Someone was getting suspicious. Brock’s mind raced. There were no loose ends. He didn’t work himself to death keeping things clean and filing the right reports only to make stupid mistakes that would cost him everything. He never left loose ends. Ever.   
First, there had been Brady. Fury had pulled apart his team to squeeze one of his own “top agents” amongst his men. Maybe that was when it started. Fury had suspected him and Brady’s death didn’t help anything, but Brady had learned too much to for Brock to keep him alive and so he had to be executed, per Pierce’s request. But Pierce had covered that up, so there had been no loose ends there.   
Then Fury had sent Vivienne.  
Something in Brock’s chest dropped and he turned around to look past his window and out into the gym. Vivienne stood across from Cooper. She was punching the palms of Coop’s hands that he held up for her. She didn’t know anything.  
Did she?  
Brock’s head hurt trying to rule her out. It hadn’t stopped with her. It wouldn’t be her. Steve had been added after, so maybe Fury had sent Donahue with the intention of having her do a particular job and Vivienne hadn’t accomplished it.   
Had Vivienne known that Fury had sent her to be his eyes and ears on the STRIKE team if that was indeed what she had been? It was doubtful—Fury worked in strange ways. He was probably trying to squeeze information out of her. If he had managed to get anything out of her, what had she told him? Brock watched her.   
Nothing.   
Vivienne had told him nothing because she knew nothing, apart from the misinformation that Brock had been feeding her as truth the whole time. She had been working for the cause without knowing it. She had been helping HYRDA.  
And so that was why Rogers was forced onto the team and now OBSIDIAN’s involvement made it clear that Fury suspected something.   
Pierce was going to kill him.

 

Vivienne smacked one last punch into Cooper’s palm before she turned around and stood at attention. She snuck a glance across the lineup at the newcomer who stood to the side with Rogers. The woman clasped her hands behind her back, watching Rumlow attentively. Her eyes had the look of a woman who had seen a lot and done a lot, something Vivienne couldn’t say that she had. Her mouth was humorless and Vivienne wondered fleetingly if it stayed that way. If it did, she doubted that she would make fast friends with the new chick.  
“Alright, boys. Looks like we’re being force-fed again.”  
Brock, the drama queen. Vivienne resisted the urge to roll her eyes.   
“As you can see, we have a visitor. She’s not just going to be a visitor, though. She’s staying.”  
Cooper coughed.  
Rumlow looked at him. “She represents OBSIDIAN and will act as a liaison between SHIELD and her department. I expect you’ll work as smoothly as you can with Agent Bradshaw. If you have questions of comments, you can see me later.” He turned to Bradshaw. “I’m not entirely sure why you’re here, but I’m going to make it clear to you only once that STRIKE is mine and that while you are a part of the operations we carry out, you are still under my authority. If I say don’t do something or don’t say something, you’d better not do or say either of those things. You take orders, just like my boys and girl here do already. Is that clear, Agent?”  
Bradshaw lifted her chin a little, looking coolly back at Rumlow. “Yes, Sir.”  
The way she was looking at him gave Vivienne an uneasy feeling. The look wasn’t unlike the silently analyzing and accusatory look that Rumlow had given her the first time that she had set foot in the gym. Vivienne didn’t know why, but that was enough to set her on edge. What exactly was Bradshaw doing on the team? There definitely hadn’t been any notice given before she had just showed up. She could only imagine the immensity of boiling irritation that bubbled beneath Brock’s skin and she hoped that things would somehow balance out soon so that they could get back into their groove, something that had been missing since Cap had joined the team.  
Vivienne watched Brock take up his clipboard and list off positions for the newly-configured formation that he had made that morning. They would be training in the Sim for the first part of the day and then, in the afternoon, Rumlow would be conducting a briefing for the mission that they would undertake on Friday. Vivienne was thrilled about that part; it was the first mission that she would be able to participate in since she had been hospitalized and she was going to make it count.   
“What are you smiling about?” Snapped Rollins. “Fuck this shit. Everything’s gonna get screwed up, now.”  
Vivienne gave him a wilting look, pretending like she didn’t feel the same. “Be nice.”  
Cooper turned around and nodded at Rollins when they were dismissed to make their way to the Sim. “Amen. Next they’re gonna want ta call up the Hulk and see if he wants to do stealth recon with us on STRIKE.”  
Vivienne shook her head to herself, deciding as she made her way out of the gym that she would find out what Agent Bradshaw was all about. She left Rollins and Cooper to walk by themselves, quickening her pace a little to catch up to Bradshaw.   
“Hey. Sorry for the grumpy intro from Rumlow,” she said, making sure she was out of earshot from her SO. “He doesn’t take change very well. Very old-fashioned, trust me.”  
Bradshaw raised her eyebrows. “There’s a difference between ‘grumpy’ and ‘disrespectful’.”  
Vivienne squinted to herself, the Agent’s tone seeming a little too condescending for her taste. She tried not to let it perturb her. “Yeah,” she said. “There is. I’m Agent Donahue, by the way. I’ve been on the team a little over a year.”  
“Bradshaw. I don’t plan on staying too long, but I do plan on being here until my work is done.”  
Vivienne nodded, pretending like she knew what the hell Bradshaw was talking about. “Sounds…great.”  
Bradshaw looked across at her. “Not really. I don’t want to be here just as much as your team doesn’t want me here. And I can tell they don’t want me here. I have a job to do, though, and the orders are higher than my personal interests.”  
Vivienne gave up. “So what is your job?”  
Bradshaw pulled her shiny new access card out of her pocket as they approached to portal into the Sim. “Observation.”  
“Welcome, Agent Cassidy Bradshaw,” came the computer’s voice as the agent was admitted through the portal.   
Vivienne didn’t know what she meant by that. Observation of what? STRIKE? She pulled her own access card out and swiped it, walking through the portal. She needed to know more.  
“So wait,” she said, aware that she was probably coming off a little too interested. “What does OBSIDIAN stand for? I’ve never heard of them before.”  
Bradshaw sighed. “Offsite black ops security and intervention division of intelligence analysis and neurolinguistics.”  
Vivienne squinted, gazing off across the lobby of the Triskelion while trying to put the pieces together. “Wouldn’t that be OBOSIDIAN…?”  
Bradshaw looked at her. “What?”  
“You know,” said Vivienne. She emphasized her point by punctuating the syllables in thin air with her index finger. “Black. Ops. There’s an extra ‘O’. OB-O-SIDIAN.”  
“I think that if they wanted to call it ‘OBOSIDIAN’,” Bradshaw said, pausing for emphasis before narrowing her eyes a little at Vivienne. “They would have called it ‘OBOSIDIAN’.”  
Vivienne held up her hands in surrender. She hadn’t meant to offend Bradshaw, she was just trying to make conversation. She looked back at Cooper and Rollins walking behind them, making a face that conveyed that she was sorry for having doubted their perception of the new agent in the first place. 

 

After a tense Sim session and lots of barking over the comms on Rumlow’s part, the team split for lunch.   
Steve checked his watch to make sure that he would be back in time if he went up a floor to the new deli that had recently been added to the Triskelion. It would be busy, but he would rather skip lunch than waste his money on the bad coffee at the café again. He patted his pocket to make sure he had his wallet and started toward the elevator. He might get extra cheese on his sandwich as a reward to himself for putting up with another morning of Rumlow’s Bullshit. He really had been about to lose his patience that morning; fortunately he stopped himself before he could say anything about how much of a pain in his ass Rumlow had been since his first day. Personal problems needed to remain at home. Rumlow had enough experience to know better, but he didn’t seem to show it.   
“Oh, wait--! Can you hold the elevator?”  
Steve heard the plea and immediately reached forward for the button near the doors.   
“Thanks.” Agent Bradshaw stepped into the space.  
Steve looked over at her. “Which floor?”  
The agent shrugged. “One, I guess. Isn’t that were the café is?”  
“If you could call it that,” said Steve. “Personally, I would avoid it, but if you’re feeling lucky…”  
Bradshaw looked at him. “It’s that bad? Forget it, then. Where else is there to go for lunch?”  
The elevator doors closed.   
“Well, they just opened a deli on the third floor. I figured that it might be worth a try. Apart from that, there’s a few places outside the gate, but pickings are pretty slim.”   
Bradshaw pointed upwards. “Third floor it is.”  
There was a silence as Steve pushed the button and they lurched upward. Bradshaw rocked on her heels a little and Steve regretted having spoken so freely about his doubts about her the night before. He hadn’t been able to help himself—things had changed drastically since he had last been a part of SHIELD.   
“Hey,” he said. “About last night, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that a lot has changed and I’m still trying to play catch-up. It gets a little overwhelming.”  
Bradshaw shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I understand.”  
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. They walked over to the deli together and took their place in the back of the noisy line.   
Bradshaw surveyed the menu that hung over the counter. “Ever had a ‘whoops, my hand slipped’ sandwich?” she asked, nodding toward the boards.  
Steve looked up, finding the ‘whoops’ sandwich. “I can’t say I have.”  
Bradshaw laughed. “You want to split one with me so we can both say we tried it without having to eat the whole thing if it’s gross?”  
Steve rubbed the back of his neck, smiling. “Why not.”  
Bradshaw ordered the sandwich and Steve insisted on paying, claiming that he had the right to after reacting poorly upon hearing that she would be involved with the STRIKE team. They looked around for an empty table, but there wasn’t one in sight, so they leaned against the railings on the outside of the establishment.   
Steve handed the sandwich to Agent Bradshaw when they finally got settled. “Here,” he said. “I’m going to go ahead and let you try it first.”  
“Ha,” said Bradshaw, taking the offering. “What a gentleman.”  
She unwrapped the sandwich and handed one of the halves to Steve. “So is Agent Rumlow always so unfriendly?”  
Steve nodded, taking the half she gave him. “Pretty much. If you’re wondering whether or not it gets better with time, it doesn’t.”  
“Hm. Nice to know.” Bradshaw took a bite, holding a cupped hand underneath her mouth to catch a piece of lettuce that had fallen out of the side of the ‘whoops’. She chewed slowly and looked back at Steve, who was waiting expectantly. “Not awful,” she said once she had swallowed.   
Steve lifted his sandwich hesitantly. He wasn’t a picky eater, but he had never really been into tomatoes, either. “It makes you wonder…” he said, putting off the bite, “The guy seems to be pretty ok with Donahue and she’s only been there for a little over a year.”  
Bradshaw looked over at him. “Why do you think that is?”  
“I don’t know,” said Steve. He finally mustered the courage to take a bite.   
“Really.”  
Steve met her gaze. He would have asked “what”, but he didn’t ever talk with his mouth full. His mother had taught him better and he always hated when other people did it. It was kind of a pet peeve.   
Bradshaw seemed to catch on and she continued. “It was a rhetorical question, Cap. They’re probably screwing.”  
Steve almost choked.   
“It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case,” said Bradshaw. “It would explain why Donahue hasn’t felt the need to spill her guts about whatever the hell is going on with STRIKE to Fury. Something’s off with that team.”  
Steve set down the sandwich. “They would both be breaking the code of conduct if that was the case. I doubt that they are having…relations. There’s quite an age difference.”  
Bradshaw shook her head. “No wonder Fury hired me. You’re applying 1940’s principles to today’s problems. I’m not saying that they are involved, but it would explain Donahue protecting Rumlow’s pride by never reporting back to Fury, which is why you’re here and why I’m here. That or it’s just loyalty to the team, but I doubt it because she hasn’t been with them all that long.”  
Steve unconsciously took another bite of sandwich, looking out across the halls. Bradshaw’s remark about Donahue’s loyalty made him think about the howling commandoes. His men hadn’t been together that long either, but they had built up a common trust and kinship toward one another that was as strong as any friendship ever could be. He would have defended any of those men in a heartbeat. “I don’t mean to offend you and I don’t mean to tell you you’re wrong,” he said to Bradshaw. “But until you’ve spent time with a group of people and gone through shared experiences like the STRIKE team probably has, you really can’t estimate the strength of a person’s loyalty to their team. Whether or not what you’re saying is fact about Donahue and Rumlow, we can’t completely rule out that it wasn’t purely an act of loyalty.”  
Bradshaw looked over at him. “I’m not taking offense,” she said. “I honestly work alone most of the time and what you’re saying could very well be the case. Unfortunately, as pure as Donahue’s intentions may be, she’s still withholding intel from Fury.”  
“Does she know she’s supposed to be reporting back to him? Fury’s a little unclear sometimes and Donahue still doesn’t strike me as someone who is probably accustomed to the way he operates.”  
Bradshaw shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m here to unearth whatever it is that the team’s hiding. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

Steve pulled the tomatoes out of his sandwich and set them back onto the wrapper. “It’ll be refreshing when things start making sense,” he said.  
“That’ll be never.”  
Steve slowly shook his head. “Well that’s just an answer I can’t accept.”

 

Vivienne stared at her phone.   
The small taco joint was bustling at this time of day and it was busy and noisy outside the bathroom door, but everything seemed silent to Vivienne. She had felt her phone buzzing while she had been waiting for Brock to come back and sit down with her and she had gone to the bathroom for a quieter atmosphere so that she could answer it, but as soon as she saw Clint’s name on her screen, she froze. She didn’t know what to do, so she watched the face of her phone glow while the tinny version of Super Freak echoed in the small space. As soon as it had stopped, Vivienne placed her phone on the bathroom sink and looked up at herself in the mirror.   
She wondered what he would have said if she had answered and she wondered if he had hoped that she wouldn’t pick up. She stared into the green depths of her eyes, wondering also what Clint had seen in them that night he had decided to kiss her.   
She waited a minute longer to see if he would call again, but he didn’t. She reached hesitantly to pick up her phone. It felt heavier and Vivienne randomly thought back to the psychology courses she had taken for fun at the academy, trying to determine if it was possible for a person to project their feelings onto an inanimate object.   
She tucked her phone back into the pocket of her hoodie and pushed her hair back from her face, collecting herself in a breath—something she had learned at the academy that had always come in useful during poker games.   
She walked back over to their table and slid into her spot across from Brock. He pushed her drink and a paper bag over to her.   
“Lunch is served.”  
She smiled at him. “Thanks, Tiger. You didn’t have to treat me. I wasn’t ducking out, I just had to pee.”  
Brock shrugged. “It’s nothing.”  
Vivienne opened the bag, loving the smell that wafted from its contents. “I love this place,” she said. “If I ever had to get married, I would marry a taco.”  
Brock was picking his teeth with a toothpick. He stopped what he was doing and looked across the table at her. It didn’t seem like he had heard her comment. That, or he just chose to ignore it the way he ignored most of the things she said that didn’t make sense to him. “Hey, Vi,” he said slowly. “When we get back from missions and we file reports, who do we tell about our operations on STRIKE?”  
Vivienne had been about to take a bite out of her taco, but she looked over her food at him. “Is this a trick question? Where did this come from?”  
Brock pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just answer the question, Vi. My day hasn’t been stellar, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better any time soon.”  
“Ditto,” said Vivienne, thinking of Bradshaw. “I don’t tell anybody except for you. STRIKE info is classified.”  
“Well, if you had to take it to a superior…?”  
“I would take it to Pierce.”  
Brock rubbed his chin, staring at the condensation on his glass. “Not Fury…”  
“No…Why?”  
Brock pushed a thumb down his glass, clearing a swathe amongst the beads of water. “It doesn’t matter.” Her answer seemed to have relieved him and some of the tension seeped out of his shoulders. When he looked back up at her, he smiled. “How’s the taco?”  
Vivienne showed him her untouched taco. “If you had stopped blabbering, I would know. Any other objections before I sink my teeth into my groom-to-be?”  
“Nah,” Brock said.  
Vivienne didn’t eat, though. She watched him. “Bradshaw’s not going to be here forever and I’m sure Fury will probably end up sending Rogers somewhere else, too, after a while.” She said. “I wouldn’t let it get to me if I were you. I’m a big girl and the men are big boys, save Henley maybe, an we can take care of ourselves, so you don’t have to worry about Bradshaw and Rogers affecting that.”  
Brock nodded, but Vivienne could tell that something was still on his mind.   
She wished that she knew what so that she could help him, but they didn’t pry into each other’s heads like that—one of the benefits of not dating, but also something that was frustrating when they were trying to figure each other out.   
Vivienne finally took a bite of her taco, knowing that there really wasn’t much she could do.


	27. Hellbender chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suspicions arise, confirmations are made. There's some catty behavior, some flirting, some recon, and a whole lot of frustration. This had better go smoothly, otherwise Pierce is going to strangle Rumlow for something that is totally out of his hands...or is it? Dun-dun-DUUUUNNN.

It was Friday.   
The early morning had gone smoothly so far for Vivienne, probably because she was excited. If she hadn’t been so enthusiastic about getting back out on the field, getting up at three would have been almost impossible.   
She poured a thermos of black coffee and snatched her keys from the counter before she gave herself one last look over in the hallway mirror, heading out the door when she was satisfied. The spring morning was crisp and she pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands while she walked out to the parking lot to search for where she had parked her car the night before.   
The sky was still black and the orange light that radiated from the streetlamps pooled over the streets like lava as she drove to the Triskelion. 

She opened the doors of the gym, giving the boys a goofy wave in case they hadn’t already been aware that she was there. They looked tired—their faces were puffy with the memory of sleep and they yawned and rubbed their eyes.   
“Is that coffee for me?” Asked Cooper, nodding at Vivienne’s thermos.   
Vivienne drew her thermos closer to her body as if to protect it. “No… But if you buy me a snickers when we’re done today, I’ll let you have a sip.”  
Cooper didn’t take a moment before answering. “Deal,” he said, motioning for her to hand it over. She handed it to him and he popped open the top, taking two long swigs of coffee.   
Vivienne wrenched the thermos back out of his hands. “I said one, cowboy. That had better be a king sized candy bar.”  
“Relax, kiddo,” said Cooper. “I’m just dying a little here and I need something to take my head off thinkin’ about my morning smoke.”  
Vivienne looked at Rollins for an explanation.   
“He’s off cigarettes again,” said Rollins, shaking his head and hooking his thumbs around his utility belt. “It’s only been a day and a few hours.”  
“You know, Jack,” said Cooper. “You don’t sound very positive and my Doc says that I need more positivity.”  
Rollins smoothed a hand over his neatly-combed hair. “Here goes…”  
Vivienne smirked and walked past them to retrieve her belt, vest, and the rest of her gear from the locker room. She walked to the back, nearly forgetting that Bradshaw would be there, too. She didn’t necessarily feel like initiating a hello, so she didn’t. She rolled the combination to her lock until it clicked open and she pulled out her things, quickly adjusting her belt around her and securing her holster.   
“Hey,” said Bradshaw.   
Vivienne looked around at her, pretending to have been too busy to notice that she had been standing there. “Oh, Hi.”  
“Are you ready to get back into the field?”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. She didn’t exactly know why Bradshaw was talking to her, especially after their introduction that had lingered in icy territory the day before. “You ready to see what STRIKE is all about?”  
Bradshaw looked at her, cocking her head to the side a little. “I’m dying for a peek.”  
“I bet,” said Vivienne under her breath as she turned back to her locker. She could still feel Bradshaw’s eyes on her—she didn’t know why it made her so uncomfortable. She grabbed the last of her gear from its place and shut the locker door, picking up her thermos again from where she had set it on the wooden bench. She turned around directly to face Bradshaw, drawing attention to how weird it was that she was watching her. “Need any help with anything?”  
Bradshaw looked down at her own gear. “I don’t think so, but thanks for asking.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Mhm,” she said before she turned on her way back out. 

 

Intel had been gathered on a heist that would take place the following night in a SHIELD facility just outside of Klosterneuburg, Austria. Only the highest ranking officials in the facility knew that the theft was scheduled to take place, but, on advisory from SHIELD in Washington, they did not plan on preventing it. The decryption codes that were going to be stolen had the potential to compromise several operations run by the DC organization and Austria had been somewhat unclear as to which operations might be exposed, something that Pierce had been rather upset about. He not only wanted to ensure the safety of the decoy that Austria had set for the thieves, but he also wanted the thieves detained permanently so that they might not have the opportunity to steal from them again. SHIELD had caught onto the trail of the professional heist team only after the privacy of the files of several smaller agencies had been jeopardized. Things had since been resolved and SHIELD secrets were once again contained and kept in their rightful place, but the codes all had to be reset and for the few minutes that their systems had been compromised, those smaller agencies were at risk of having all of their operations exposed to whoever happened to google “SHIELD” at the time.   
Thankfully, nothing compromising had been leaked, but that might not be the case if DC was cracked. Pierce didn’t want to take that chance.   
After discovering a pattern in the heist team’s locations of choice for robbery, SHIELD began setting up decoy decryption codes without interfering. The codes gave away some ‘secrets’, the ones they were willing to have dangled to the public, but kept others hidden. Enough information was extracted using the decoy codes so that the heist team wouldn’t catch onto their game, but SHIELD had been tracking their every move up until that point and they were ready to strike. If they acted too early, the risk of missing the pattern was too high and they would have to start over trying to figure out whatever new pattern the thieves would come up with.   
Austria gave them enough time to be sure that the pattern that had been established was still legitimate. The heist team would never see them coming since they still thought that SHIELD was several paces behind them.   
Pierce had decided to send STRIKE team Delta so that he might ensure the safety of DC’s assets himself. He hadn’t exactly notified Austria, but he was sure the small matter of requesting permission would be dismissed after the heist team was finally and successfully detained. 

Vivienne’s bubblegum bubble popped and she bared her teeth, pulling the gum back into her mouth with her tongue. She gazed up at the ceiling over the bed she lay spread-eagle on, wondering how old the hotel was that SHIELD had put them up in. It smelled like musty floorboards and the fixtures did little to make her think that the management had changed anything since the seventies at most. Her body was catching up with her and her energy, or lack thereof, seemed to be making it impossible at that particular moment to get up off of the bed. The only thing keeping her awake at that point was the snapping of her own gum.   
The flight had been long and she had eyed Bradshaw the whole time, trying hard not to be conspicuous about it. The agent had been sitting on the other side of the quinjet with Rogers and they had been talking about something—Vivienne had picked up on some conversation about basic training, but it had been hard to hear and Vivienne had given up trying to listen. They weren’t talking about her. She didn’t know why she thought they might. Maybe it was because of the way Bradshaw occasionally looked over at her.   
She assumed that Bradshaw and Rogers had kindled the beginnings of some sort of friendship through being new together. Vivienne resisted the urge to roll her eyes when she thought about it. She hadn’t talked to Rogers since that day in the hall apart from communicating, as was necessary, in the Sim. After seeing him giving up on trying to be a part of the STRIKE team and focusing more energy on forming some little clique with Bradshaw, Vivienne decided that it wasn’t really worth her time to waste her breath on him anymore.   
Vivienne rolled over and grabbed her phone off of the dresser. It was one in the afternoon. She had enough time to relax and close her eyes if she wanted to. They were going to have their last preliminary briefing at seven that evening before they would leave for the mission, but until then, the time was all hers. 

 

Bradshaw looked out the window at the sunny afternoon just beyond the garden that threatened to overtake the windowpane. There was an airplane, white against the deep blue of the sky, which cut Austria in half with a fluffy white contrail.   
She brought the cup of coffee to her lips again, taking a careful sip.  
“May I sit with you?”  
Bradshaw looked around to see Rogers standing just past the couch. She smiled, patting the cushion. “Of course.”  
She watched him sit down on the edge, not making himself overly comfortable, but formal enough to not come across rude or inconsiderate of her presence.   
She nodded to the window. “Pretty, isn’t it? This is my third time in Austria.”  
Rogers folded his arms. “Yeah. The scenery is nice. Last time I was here I didn’t get to take in too much of it, though.”  
Bradshaw pressed her lips together, nodding. “Yeah. I guess not.”  
“It was a little colder, too.”  
Bradshaw chuckled. “I would imagine it was. It’s a good thing you’ve had the opportunity to see this place in a different light. It’s changed a lot since the 1940s.”  
“Says the woman who was born in the…80s I’m guessing?”  
“Hey.” Bradshaw pushed his knee a little in mock offense. “I may have been born in the 80s, but that’s not my fault. I’m just sticking up for Austria—they’ve had it rough.”  
Steve grinned. “I’m just teasing. When you’re technically ninety-nine years old, all you can really do is make age jokes.”  
“Tch.” Bradshaw smiled slyly. “Hopefully that’s not all you can do.”  
Steve caught her eye and he felt his cheeks immediately flush bright red. He tried to hide it by wiping a hand over his jaw.   
Bradshaw laughed. “Sorry.”  
Steve shook his head. “Don’t be.” He chuckled. “It’s just been a while.”  
Bradshaw chuckled. “Now you’re just setting yourself up.”  
Steve had to laugh. He knew what she meant. Women had certainly gotten more direct since the 1940s, but he wasn’t necessarily embarrassed or uncomfortable. It was all rather casual, in fact, and he found himself enjoying the harmless back and forth.  
Bradshaw took another sip of her coffee and looked back out the window. Their conversation had seemed to break some ice and now sitting together didn’t necessarily have the kind of pressure that might have been present before. There wasn’t really a forced need for words. Steve let his mind wander and, as they often did, his thoughts drifted back toward work and specifically about the STRIKE team. It seemed that the topic took up all of his attention when he wasn’t wrapped up in other activities.   
Bradshaw looked across at Rogers, who was doing his best not to look back at her, and broke the silence. “So what else is on your mind, Cap?”  
Rogers sighed. “Nothing easy to talk about.”  
“I get that.”  
Rogers nodded and picked imaginary lint from his pants leg. “Have you considered why we’re here? Why, for the sake of time and energy, we aren’t just leaving this for the Austrian SHIELD teams to handle?”  
Bradshaw sat back a little into the couch. “Yeah I gave it some thought.”  
“And?”  
“Nothing entirely conclusive…” Bradshaw popped the top off of her coffee cup. “I think somebody is going through an awful lot of effort to get STRIKE here for some reason…Maybe there’s somebody on the heist team they’re after or maybe they are afraid that the heist team will stumble across something they don’t want shared.”  
Rogers watched her as she tilted her cup, seemingly captivated with disturbing the contents within. Maybe she was just trying to find a reason not to have to meet his gaze. “So what’s the process here?” He asked. “STRIKE is run through Pierce, isn’t it? Does Fury suspect Pierce of something?” He paused. “If we found something…unusual…how would we even go about addressing it?”  
Bradshaw clicked her tongue, looking up at him in amusement. “You ask a lot of questions, Rogers.”  
“I had gotten the impression when we met that we were intended to work together here.”  
“We are,” said Bradshaw. “And honestly, I don’t know what would happen. We just find evidence that something fishy might be going on and we report it. Think of us as private investigators rather than cops.”  
Rogers rubbed his chin. “I think of myself as an agent who is working to keep SHIELD honest. I think I would have a hard time putting rank before the potential jeopardy of being unable to act upon something I know is wrong.”  
Bradshaw chuckled. “Well I suppose that’s why you’re captain America. And I also suppose that’s why Fury hired me to help you.”

 

Cooper walked down the staircase, his boots heavy on the old wood steps. He had needed to move around—his hands and feet had started tingling as soon as he had stepped out of the shower. If he had followed his usual routine, he would have lit a cigarette and smoked while he was getting dressed. However, Rollins had convinced him to leave his pack of cigarettes back in DC, so he was neck deep in the beginnings of a cold sweat and his stomach was starting to turn a little. He had decided to get some fresh air—breathing the stale air inside the hotel wasn’t about to help his nausea.   
Rollins watched out for him, he’d give him that much, but he wanted nothing more than to kick the door down to Jack’s room and beat the shit out of him for letting him ever agree to leave his Marlboro Reds on the dresser at Jack’s place.   
Toothpicks weren’t good enough right now.  
Cooper walked down the hall toward the front door. His palms felt clammy. He started to pass the lobby when a burst of laughter caused him to pause and look over toward the window across the room. Bradhsaw and Rogers were sitting together and Bradhsaw must have said something to embarrass Cap. The guy was bright red. They didn’t notice him watching them.   
Cooper looked around and inconspicuously walked across the room, reaching the hallway that backed up to where Cap and Bradshaw were sitting. He leaned casually back against the wall and pulled out his phone so it wasn’t so obvious that he was eavesdropping to those who might walk by. He was around the corner and the agents’ sight, but he could still hear the two talking. Any bit of information on why the hell the two were added to the team in the first place would be helpful to Rumlow. He knew that. He took a breath, urging his nausea to cease so that he might have to opportunity to contribute something useful about the two.  
He strained to hear what they were saying. Bradshaw’s voice was almost inaudible after the conversation had apparently shifted topics.   
He closed his eyes, listening.   
“STRIKE is run through Pierce, isn’t it? Does Fury suspect Pierce of something?” Cap was talking lowly, but not quietly enough to be out of earshot. “If we found something…unusual…how would we even go about addressing it?”  
Cooper held his breath when the conversation hushed further, afraid that his breathing might make what they had to say harder to hear. “…intended to work together here…”  
Cooper’s stomach turned a little and he had to let his breath go. He opened his eyes to see a maid watching him warily. He nodded at her with a smirk and she flushed and went back to pushing her cleaning cart down to the next room. Cooper stepped away from the wall, glancing behind him before making his way back up the staircase. 

 

The blueprints already had notes penned in all over them—Brock wanted this mission to go smoothly so that it might lessen the blow for Pierce to learn of Bradshaw’s involvement on the STRIKE team, news that he still had to break to his boss. Making sure that every detail was covered would ensure that the mission would be a success, so he had been working and re-working his strategy throughout the duration of their flight overseas.   
Pierce had sent the mission request down via an encrypted email a few days ago. The Heist team had been located and their next target had been made clear enough for them to finally mobilize and take down the threat. The email had made it known that Pierce was a little apprehensive about Austria’s decoy and whatever information it contained. If it got into the wrong hands, although harmless enough for SHIELD, it could spell disaster for HYDRA and Insight. Some records were passable to the naked eye, but if they were investigated further, evidence of tampering would inevitably be found and SHIELD would be dragged into court for crimes they didn’t know they had committed. It was the last thing Insight needed.  
Though Pierce didn’t know it yet, it was even more essential for the team to succeed now that somebody had found a suspicious thread and had begun to give it curious tugs—hence Bradshaw and Rogers. There was a chance that everything might blow over if they caught the team in time. If they didn’t, there was no telling what might happen the following day. 

Brock set his elbows on the table and pressed his fingers to his temples. He sighed.  
Rollins watched him from across the table. “Have you told Pierce?”  
Brock blinked away from the blueprints of the Austrian SHIELD facility. They were giving him a headache. He looked up at Rollins. “What…? Oh. No. No, I haven’t.”  
Rollins grimaced. “What will you tell him? It’s obvious somebody is getting suspicious.”  
“I don’t know, Jack.” Brock paused and lowered his voice as the sound of someone walking by came under the door. “I’m gonna take down the heist team first and do this a step at a time. What else am I supposed to do? I’m doing everything he’s asked me to. He’s still gonna have my fucking head.”   
Rollins nodded, seemingly slipping into deep thought.  
“And as for what we’re gonna do about Bradshaw and Cap…” Brock said slowly, “We’ve done a pretty decent job making sure Donahue hasn’t picked up on anything so far…”  
“Only because she’s so enamored with you.”  
Brock squinted at Rollins. “Yeah, but it’s kept her from seeing this shit that’s right under her nose, hasn’t it?”  
Rollins shrugged. “I’m not saying that you’ve got a bad thing with Donahue, but you can’t do the same with Cap and Bradshaw.”  
“I know.”  
There was a pause.  
“Do you think Donahue saw something? You think she told Fury?”  
Brock met his gaze. Rollins didn’t seem afraid to drag Donahue into the spotlight again between them. He knew that Jack was just doing his job and he tried hard not to immediately get defensive. He needed to be objective.   
“It’s a possibility,” said Brock. “And I’ve thought about it myself, but I feel like we would have known. Cap and Bradshaw seem to be testing the waters. If Vivienne had told anyone anything about what’s really going on, that would have been enough to warrant some sort of action that was more immediate. We wouldn’t still be operating.”  
Jack crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. “They’re looking for a slip-up.”  
“It could have been Cap who got suspicious.”  
They both looked down at the blueprints on the table, their gazes sinking past the paper in thought.  
“We gotta put away this heist team before they spill anything questionable…”  
“Agreed.”  
The door across the room opened and Brock and Jack looked over to see Cooper walk in. He closed the door behind him and looked across at them. He was a little pale and his solemn expression did little to help Brock’s nerves.   
“What is it?” Brock asked.   
Cooper walked over to them.  
Jack stood up from the table. “You look like shit, Tex.”  
“I’m fine,” said Cooper. “That’s just my damn Reds calling me. But never mind that—I overheard Cap and Bradshaw talking downstairs. I think Fury’s getting wise to us and I think we’ve got ourselves a problem ‘cause both of them have been placed on spy duty.”  
Brock watched Cooper. “What do you mean?”  
“I mean that it makes sense that that’s the whole reason Bradshaw is here. To spy. And she and Cap are working together for Fury.”  
“Jesus,” Jack looked across at Brock. “Well that confirms the worst.”  
Brock clenched his jaw. “What leaked?” He turned his back from Jack and Cooper and walked away from the table slowly. “I have no fucking idea what it could have been.”  
“Does it matter?” asked Jack. “It’s already happened.”  
Brock pinched the bridge of his nose. “Would you use a bucket with a hole in it, Jack?”  
“I—“  
“No. No, you wouldn’t.”  
Cooper rubbed the back of his neck. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think they really know anything. I think they’re just waiting for us to trip.”  
Brock turned back to look at his men. His mind was going into overdrive as his thoughts flitted through everything and anything that could have set Bradshaw and Cap into motion. “No mistakes. Mistakes or not, my head’s gonna be on a fucking plate when we get back to DC, but we gotta see this through perfectly.”  
“Got it,” said Cooper.


	28. Hellbender Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How much knowledge is too much knowledge...or rather, what is the least amount necessary to find out STRIKE's secret and has that line been drawn and stepped past already?

The Austrian SHIELD headquarters, much like the Triskelion, was a towering presence. It loomed over the buildings that surrounded it, pushing up from the city streets with a steel and glass presence that did little to attempt to blend in with its neighboring structures. Pierce had the team provided with the means to enter the building after hours, a maneuver that Austria didn’t need to know about, necessitating the newest stealth technologies and a little hacking to ensure no alarms were set off. The Austrian headquarters was fairly new and it didn’t have a STRIKE unit, so after nine, most of the employees went home. It was nine fifteen and the sky had become inky black with the hour. The only light on the neighboring rooftop where STRIKE was perched came from the band of stars that glittered above the city, clear with the thin chill of the atmosphere.   
Vivienne zipped the neck of her jacket up and pressed her palms to her cheeks, attempting to shrug her shoulders underneath all of her tactical gear to try to conserve heat. The cement roof beneath her was cold, but she wouldn’t get up unless Brock told her to. He had been short with the team throughout the duration of the briefing earlier and he had stressed the need to listen carefully, making eye contact with everyone who had been standing around the table so that he might make his point as clear as possible. When he had looked at her, there had been no exceptions or favoritism. If she slipped up, he would probably shoot her or something. She just knew she couldn’t allow that to happen.   
Now they sat waiting for the right moment when the automatic security would switch over when the last employees left the building. They needed to act fast to get in without being detected, but it was definitely doable with Rumlow spearheading the operation.   
Vivienne shifted a little and looked across at Cooper, who sat beside her. “Has your butt frozen off yet?”  
The night was quiet and Vivienne’s voice sounded loud even though it was barely above a whisper.  
Cooper shrugged. “I dunno.”  
“Well tell me when it freezes off so that I can get up before mine does. I like my butt.”  
Cooper winked at her. “I like your butt, too. However, yours is gonna fall off first ‘cause my ass is better and it’s probably bigger.”  
“Uh. No it’s not.”  
“Yes it is.”  
“No…”  
“Jesus Christ.”  
Vivienne looked around to her other side where Rumlow was checking his watch. “You got something to say?”  
“Yes,” he said between his teeth. “Shut up.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes and looked across to where Bradshaw sat a few feet away. The agent was watching her again. She would have called her out on it, had Brock not stressed the importance for her to be quiet. Instead, she watched her back until Bradshaw finally looked away.  
“Ok. Up. It’s time to go, STRIKE.”  
The team pushed themselves to their feet and Rollins and Crue pulled up a heavy metal contraption, which they set into the corner of the roof. Rollins pushed a button on the base of the apparatus, which released spring-loaded clamps that buried it firmly into place.   
Rumlow checked his watch. “Five minutes.”  
Rollins and Crue lifted the barrel-like part of the contraption and locked it into place. Rollins typed in the pre-determined coordinates on the keypad in the back. Then, both men held the machinery firmly as Brock stepped forward to push another button.   
The sound was significantly silenced for the size of the piece, but it still seemed unnervingly loud against the dead quiet of the night. A thick cable shot out toward the side of the Austrian Headquarters and buried itself into the side of the building just above one of the eighth-story windows.   
Brock passed Vivienne and Cooper zipline attachments and the two agents stepped forward.   
Cooper swallowed and traced the sign of the cross over himself. “last time I did this, I almost died.”  
“Less talking,” said Rumlow firmly. “Once you get there, you have the disruptor I gave you. The exact time before the system switches over is programmed into that device, so all you have to do is stick it on the wall and wait for the timer to go off. You need to move in that minute or else we aren’t getting in. Is that clear?”  
“Yeah, Boss.”  
“Vi,” Rumlow looked across at Vivienne. “You’re running Coop’s back up. As soon as you guys get in, you need to move toward the east wing. That’s the heist team’s most likely point of entry. Got it?”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
Rumlow nodded. “STRIKE, we are go for phase one.”  
Cooper set the bar of his zipline handles over the thick cable. The heavily-magnetized piece clanked into place and he pulled the safety buckle down from the handle and attached it to his harness.   
“Ugh.” He muttered, pulling the visor on his helmet down. “Fuck this.”  
Cooper pushed off from the edge of the building and propelled himself out and across the cable toward the opposite building. Vivienne set her handle down as Cooper had done and she buckled the safety cord to her harness. She pulled down her visor and pushed off the edge.  
The feeling of flying across the line was both terrifying and exhilarating. She dared not look below her and preferred, instead, to imagine the ground was much closer than it actually was.   
She applied the brakes on the handles when she reached the other side and met Cooper, who had detached the disruptor from his belt and was checking the countdown on the back of it.   
“Fifty-six seconds and counting down,” he said. “Time to kill their security.”  
He pulled the protective covering off of the adhesive side of the disruptor and pressed the device hard against the metal siding of the building. It held fast and Cooper immediately readied his laser cutter. Vivienne watched the red numbers count down.   
There was a miniscule beep followed by a faint muffled buzzing sound that came from the other side of the glass. Cooper acted fast, cutting an opening large enough to enter through. Vivienne passed him a device that had suction cups on the end of it. He pressed the cups the glass and then pushed inward. The pane fell through, but Cooper held it still so that it wouldn’t shatter. The glass was heavy and he grunted with the strain. Vivienne detached his safety buckle for him and Cooper stepped through the hole he had made in the window. He set down the pane and helped Vivienne through.   
Vivienne touched her earpiece. “Phase one complete.”  
Rumlow’s voice came over the comm. “Proceed to phase two, take positions on the east wing. Rogers and Bradshaw will move in behind you. Henley and I will back.”  
“Affirmative.” Vivienne looked back at Cooper, releasing her mic. “So why again isn’t Rumlow taking the lead on this one? I feel like he would want to run point.”  
Cooper shrugged. “I guess he wants you to get the experience of being up front.”  
“You’re never up front, either, Coop.”  
“Because I’m a sniper.”  
“Yes. Exactly. So for a mission that has to go perfectly, does this not seem a little out-of-place?”  
Cooper combed his hair back with his fingers and pulled a hair tie from over his wrist, tying his hair back in a quick bun. “You’re so full of questions all the time.”  
They moved forward through the dark building toward the east wing while they talked. Empty desks and strange machinery cast eerie shadows against the walls from the iridescent city below.   
“They’re actually decent questions, though.” Said Vivienne, clearing one of the blind corners they passed with a casual sweep through her scope. “It just doesn’t make sense. If Brock wants this to go so smoothly, why—“  
“He’s been doing this for years, Donahue,” interrupted Cooper. He looked back at her over his shoulder. “He knows what he’s doing.”  
“Ok.” Vivienne held up her hands in defense. “Whatever.”  
They made their way to the east entry portal and found the best vantage point from which they could wait and watch the heist team’s entry. It was the best point for the highest likelihood of smoothly apprehending the team as well.   
They leaned against the wall behind one of the cubicles next to the East portal entrance and Vivienne waited while Cooper relayed their progress to the rest of the team.   
It really didn’t make any sense for her and Cooper to run point on the mission, especially if Brock wanted everything to go perfectly. She knew she could handle apprehending the heist team with Cooper’s help and Bradshaw and Rogers backing them, but she also knew Brock better. If he was really truly was focused on taking down the team exactly the way he wanted it done—if it was really that important to him—he would do it himself. He was a perfectionist and at times, he was an overbearing control freak to the point where Vivienne sometimes just had to tune him out. It didn’t make sense at all for him not to be running the front doing the most of the job that was apparently the sole focus of their mission.   
Unless it wasn’t.  
Vivienne stared deeply into the greyish fabric of the cubicle opposite them. She couldn’t really think of what else they might be doing other than apprehending the thieves, but it just didn’t sit well with her to try to imagine that that was the only reason they were in Austria. It was like trying to substitute a piece from a different puzzle for the missing piece of another. When she really thought about it, it made her uneasy.  
Clint had told her a few times about how compartmentalized SHIELD was. It seemed like everybody was spying on everybody else and everybody had a unique, pre-determined agenda. Vivienne hadn’t really thought about applying that knowledge to the STRIKE team. She just assumed they were all working on the same level.   
Thinking about it made her uneasy, though, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to consider why else they were there. She understood that Brock, outranking her to the extent that he did, would definitely have the clearance to know more than she would about a mission without having to tell her everything, but she had always just assumed that what he told her was everything he really knew. The thought that the whole time he may have actually been carrying out alternate missions while never having said a word about his endeavors to her turned her stomach a little.   
She hated to think about it, but it made senses that there might actually be a mission going on above the one she was involved in that she wasn’t aware of.   
She thought back to California, Cambodia, Russia… She concluded to herself that she’d rather not know. It was none of her business, it was above her rank, and confrontation was the last thing her relationship with Brock needed.   
“Rogers reporting. Bradshaw and I have made our entry. Phase three is complete.”  
Vivienne looked over at Cooper. He was looking at her silently, apparently studying her thought process. He nodded at her when she made eye contact and then looked away.   
Vivienne didn’t like the feeling that churned in her stomach.

 

Brock unclipped his safety buckle from his harness and stepped into the dark building. He helped Henley through the opening before pressing his earpiece. “Phase five is go. Bradshaw and Rogers, report on your position.”  
Rogers’ voice came over the comm line. “In position to back entry from the East. We’re in place.”  
“Good.” Rumlow lifted his flashlight and clicked it back toward where Rollins and Crue waited back on the rooftop. The next part of the operation for him and Henley would be entirely hand signals and flash-signing. With Donahue, Bradshaw, and Rogers’ focus on capturing the heist team, none of them would give a second thought to what he and Henley were doing in the North wing. The SHIELD intelligence would be safely transported out of the building without any outsiders to HYDRA being the wiser to their agenda.   
Brock and Henley made their way deeper into the North wing of the building, bypassing security easily with the decryption codes Piece had given them. They worked through the security portals carefully—their disruptors on their belts acted well against the security measures and they would be virtually invisible on camera and undetectable while passing through security gates. They entered the vault where the memory discs were kept and Brock looked down at his tablet that he had brought.   
“Disc E5774,” he muttered. “Start looking.”

 

Vivienne checked her watch.   
If their intel on the heist team’s timing was accurate, the team would be breaking into the building and making their way to the Eighth floor in the next few minutes. They seemed to like entering two minutes after the hour, and it was three minutes until their specified time. It made sense—the cameras at that point in time allowed a three second time frame during which they didn’t cover the doors completely. The team would take out the cameras and use their home-made equipment to hack into SHIELD security to shut down the basic security to the rest of the building. They would then make their way to the eight floor where the records were kept, and they would be ambushed by STRIKE. Most likely it would be a breeze. The hackers weren’t soldiers—they were curious nerds whose equipment offered them the opportunity to level the playing field a little for the Average Joe. They had good intentions, but they failed to see how crippling their interference could actually be. They needed to be brought in.  
Vivienne let out a calm breath. The usual adrenaline high was beginning to pump into her system and she didn’t want it to interfere with the smooth completion of the mission at hand.   
There was a loud clank as the elevator security was overridden and the numbers above the elevator blinked to life. The light behind the little plastic floor numbers crawled slowly up toward eight. Vivienne wiped her palms on her pants and then gripped her gun tightly, setting it in the crook of her arm and following Cooper’s lead as he straightened up to get ready for the action at hand.   
Cooper touched his earpiece. “We got company,” he said softly.   
He and Vivienne pressed themselves against the wall, sinking into the dark shadow away from the harsh light that bathed the front hall near the elevator.   
“Back up two ready,” came Rogers’ voice over the comm.  
“Back up three in position,” said Henley.  
The doors to the elevator dinged open and these was a pause before the soft sound of shoes gripping the tile came toward them. They needed to wait long enough to make sure none of the targets had the opportunity to escape. The footsteps came closer and Vivienne held her breath until the sound of the elevator doors shutting carried to where they waited. There was only enough time for a heartbeat before Cooper stepped out from behind the wall, whirling to face the heist team squarely. “FREEZE! Don’t fucking move! Hands in the air—NOW!”  
Vivienne was right behind him. She turned the corner and lifted the barrel of her rifle, quickly training it on the man closest to the elevator. Her heart pounded in her ears as her eyes darted through the group.  
Cooper had his sights trained on the closest man. “You are trespassing on SHIELD property and will be tried and found guilty of Theft and leaking confidential information.”  
There were three men and a woman. They all wore ski masks. Vivienne internally rolled her eyes. How fucking original. The man closest to Cooper looked back at the woman slightly behind him.   
“Don’t look at her,” said Cooper. “Look at me. I want all of your hands empty. Drop your bags NOW. Any other movement and you’re gonna find a slug between your eyes, understood?”  
Vivienne heard Bradshaw and Rogers approach the scene.   
“That won’t be necessary,” sad Bradshaw. “We want them for questioning, and a trial. That can’t happen if they’re dead.”  
“Shut up, girlie,” said Cooper. “The safety of this team comes first. DROP THE BAGS NOW!”  
Vivienne watched as the members of the heist team slowly lifted their duffle bags off of their shoulders  
The woman made eye contact with her and Vivienne felt uneasiness pull at her insides. The woman’s hand was in her duffle bag and she was slowly drawing it out.  
Vivienne immediately trained her gun on the woman. “Get your hand out of your fucking bag RIGHT NOW.”  
“We’re putting an end to this government corruption,” said the man in the front. “We hate SHIELD and what they say they stand for. You can take us to trial, but I don’t think that would benefit you at all.”  
“Put the bags down,” said Bradshaw behind Vivienne. “Put the bags down slowly and we can work this out without people getting hurt.”  
The man shook his head. “And we know about you, too… Agent Bradshaw, isn’t it? You’re not SHIELD…,” he scoffed, “You’re a damn mercenary. Look at the low level SHIELD has fallen to.”  
The woman still didn’t remove her hand from the bag. Vivienne’s finger lowered to hover over her trigger. “Get your hand out of the fucking bag, bitch.”  
“We want to give the people their freedom back,” said the woman.   
“GET YOU HAND OUT OF THE BAG OR I WILL SHOOT YOU.”  
The heist leader nodded back toward one of his other men. “You’re being recorded right now. Let’s see what the court system has to say about this. You can’t gun down all of us.”  
Rogers finally spoke up. “We aren’t gunning down anybody.”  
The man shook his head. “Captain. I used to look up to you as a kid.”  
“Hands out of the bag!” yelled Cooper.   
Vivienne barely registered everything that happened and the split second in which it all seemed to unfold.   
The woman suddenly pulled a canister out of her bag and yanked out the pin, throwing it towards Vivienne and Cooper. Vivienne pulled her trigger as the woman twisted away from her and the bullet that left the barrel of her gun punched into the woman’s left shoulder. Cooper’s gun went off and the bullet found its mark dead center between the heist leader’s eyes. Vivienne heard Rogers yelling, but she didn’t know what he was saying. Smoke shot out from the canister on the floor and Vivienne leapt through it in pursuit of her target, who was getting away.  
Cooper was onto the next man before his fist mark had even hit the floor and Bradshaw was shouting into her earpiece.  
Vivienne heard Rogers’ voice over the comm line. “Targets are headed towards you, Rumlow. Is backup ready?”  
“FUCK.”  
The stress in Rumlow’s voice was enough to send the extra jolt of adrenaline through Vivienne’s body that she needed and she lunged over one of the security portals to pursue her target.   
“Don’t let her out of your sight, Donahue!” It was Cooper in her earpiece. “You get a clear shot, you take it!”  
Vivienne sprinted around the corner into the next hall. The woman was just meters ahead of her. Vivienne took the shot.   
The slug buried itself between the woman’s shoulder blades and she was propelled forward. Her pace couldn’t keep up with the bullet and she hit the ground hard. Vivienne ran forward, only barely registering that she had just shot the woman. Cooper had told her to. It had been an order and she had obeyed.   
She reached her target and stopped, clumsily kneeling on the floor and grabbing the woman’s shoulder. Blood bubbled from the raw bullet wound in the woman’s back and Vivienne turned her over. She was still breathing, but they were choking breaths and speckles of blood dotted her lips from the effort. Vivienne felt suddenly nauseated with her own handiwork one she saw its effect working up close. She swallowed back the bile in her throat and pulled the woman’s shoulder back so that she was facing her   
The woman looked at her, the unspeakable pain apparent in her eyes. “I know what you are,” she choked. “I know your secret.”  
Vivienne gritted her teeth. “What are you talking about?”  
“SHIELD died a long time ago…The world needs to know…” Vivienne felt warmth seep into the knee of her pants. The woman’s blood was pooling beneath her. Her body was becoming limp and heavy and it was hard to keep her propped up.  
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” insisted Vivienne.  
The woman clutched Vivienne’s arm. She was having trouble speaking and her chest was convulsing. She coughed hard and drew a scraping breath into her lungs. “HYDRA.”   
She looked up and past Vivienne’s shoulder and her eyes widened. There was a loud and abrupt bang and hot blood splattered over Vivienne’s face. Not hers. She opened her eyes to see a bullet hole in the woman’s forehead. The ringing in Vivienne’s ears was deafening. She pushed herself off the floor and reeled back, colliding with Cooper, who had been standing behind her. He caught her, but she pushed away to collapse onto a nearby desk. She vomited, unable to hold it in any longer.   
She heard Cooper mutter. “Jesus.”  
“What happened?”   
Vivienne looked up when she heard Brock’s voice. He had seemingly just appeared.  
His eyes met hers and then they traveled over her face. She pushed herself back off of the desk as he hurriedly closed the distance between them. She didn’t know what to do, so she waited for him, her gaze creeping back over her shoulder to where the woman lay.  
Brock’s hands cupped her face and he pulled her back to him, immediately looking her over. “Are you hurt?” He demanded. “What the fuck happened?”  
Vivienne shook her head.   
“I need to talk to you, Brock,” said Cooper.   
Brock looked up at him, then back at Vivienne. His gaze was hard and acidic, searching. He pushed his hands over her face as if to wipe off the blood, but his fingers left her skin before the job was done and he walked past her over to where Cooper stood.   
Vivienne felt like she was in a dream—confusing, awful. She wanted to wake up.   
Rogers and Bradshaw came around the corner and stopped short when they saw the rest of the team and the woman that lay dead on the floor.


	29. Hellbender Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are a little rocky. Vivienne tries to comprehend what happened the night before in Austria and Brock can't let that happen. In an attempt to make his plan to right everything run smoothly, he accidentally pushes Vivienne away again. (Get it right, Brock!) Steve has discovered an aspect of the STRIKE team that has been hidden for the last three years and that sparks a plan that could have the potential to strain one of his friendships. Is it worth it? Steve says yes.

“Good God.”  
Bradshaw and Rogers stood a few paces back from Fury’s desk. Maybe distance would make the news easier to receive, but it was looking like maybe it hadn’t made much of a difference after all. They had finished recounting what had happened in Austria. Apparently, Fury hadn’t even known that the team had planned on taking an overseas trip. His initial anger had set the tone for the rest of the report. When they finished giving their accounts of what had happened, they stood and waited for what felt like a long time. Fury had lit a cigar while Bradshaw had been talking and now, after his sole utterance, he gazed out the window beside his desk.   
Rogers waited, shifting a little on his feet. He had been up since they had left Austria that night and now it was almost seven in the morning. The team had a day off scheduled that day, so there was no rush for him to leave Fury’s office, but his skin had been crawling since he had watched Agent Donahue and Agent Cooper gun down the heist team so savagely. None of the members had been left alive and Steve wondered if there had been a nastier reason that went past the simple idea that they had been killed out of sheer personal defense. If there was a possibility that that was the case, and if Fury encouraged them to dig further, he would spend all day digging.   
Donahue’s face—the blood splattered all over her—haunted his thoughts. She had looked at him with eyes that were so empty.  
He needed to get to the bottom of whatever it was that twisted that team into the way it was.   
“Why would they kill them all?” Pondered Bradshaw, voicing aloud what the three of them had been stewing over. “It doesn’t make sense.”  
“It does if the heist team had the ability to harm them…” said Fury.   
“They knew me,” said Bradshaw. “The team knew who I was…”  
“Maybe they knew something about STRIKE,” said Steve. Bradshaw looked over at him and he rubbed his chin in thought. “It’s a shot in the dark, but if they knew Bradshaw, they probably knew more about all of us than we had originally thought.”  
Fury took a long draw from his cigar. He breathed out, squinting a little while he mulled things over. “Even though it sets us further back from knowing anything compromising about STRIKE, it was probably best that those members were eliminated.”  
Steve stared at Fury. “Are you serious?”  
“They apparently knew too much, Rogers.”  
Steve let out an exasperated breath. “So every time somebody ‘knows too much’, they need to be killed? Those men and that woman were brutally gunned down by the SHIELD STRIKE team.”  
“Information so crippling shouldn’t be made open to the public,” said Fury, turning in his chair to look at Steve. “That’s the kind of thing that gets more people killed. Innocent people.”  
Steve could see Bradshaw nodding out of his peripherals. He was barely keeping his frustration from boiling over. She had to know it was wrong.  
“Fortunately,” said Fury, “that mess still gives us an opportunity to find out more about our friends on STRIKE. They had to have called somebody to take care of that mess, most likely somebody inside Austrian Headquarters who is in the loop. I need for you to find out who that is.”  
“On it,” said Bradshaw. “That shouldn’t be hard.”

 

Vivienne watched as the sun crept hesitantly over the sheets on the bed, crawling across the floor, appearing and disappearing with the passing of the last of the nighttime clouds. She had tried to sleep, but she kept startling awake again and tossing in another cold sweat before pushing her fingers through her hair and staring at the ceiling in utter defeat.   
Brock had insisted that she come home with him after they had landed in DC. He could probably see that the night had shaken her a little and she was grateful not to have had to spend the following hours alone. Brock had undressed and gone immediately to bed. He wasn’t moody, but he had been silent, obviously deep in thought. He hadn’t said much to her after she slipped between the sheets next to him. What had there really been to say? It seemed to him that the intensity of the night could be released somewhere between consciousness and the beginnings of REM. For Vivienne, she knew it wouldn’t be that easy.   
She looked up at the clock. They had gotten in around six. It was only nine-thirty in the morning.   
She picked up her phone off the dresser, looking over her shoulder fleetingly to make sure that she hadn’t awakened Brock. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Her mind was in too many places.   
She scrolled through her contacts and noticed that Clint had tried to call her the day before. Her phone didn’t get service overseas, so she hadn’t noticed until that moment when it caught up to being back in DC. He had left a voice message.   
Vivienne looked back over her shoulder and then got up silently from the bed. She padded across the polished wooden floor; it was cool and grounding under her bare feet. She reached the bathroom and shut the door behind her, bringing up her phone to press the play button. She held the phone up to her ear, looking back at herself in the mirror.   
“Hey, Vi,” said Clint. “I think we should probably talk. I haven’t seen you in a little while and I just want to make sure you’re ok. Just call me back or text me if that’s easier. Just let me know.”  
Vivienne set her phone down on the sink. She missed him and she really needed him. She needed someone she could talk to and she had a hard time considering Brock as an option.   
She really wished that she had never gone to the gym that night and met Clint there. She could have gone back to her apartment or she could have gone out to get pizza—she could have been anywhere else or done anything else and her heart wouldn’t be suffering quite as much as it was when she thought about it. She was having a hard time keeping everything in check.  
Since they had left Austrian headquarters, she had been replaying and replaying the mission in her mind, particularly the part where she shot a weaponless woman in the back and the feeling of that woman’s blood dripping down her cheeks and nose and over her chin. And what the woman had said—how she had accused her…  
…of being HYRDA…?  
It didn’t make sense and Vivienne’s head hurt thinking about it. Trying to tie the woman’s accusations into reality didn’t fit and it invited a dizzy feeling akin to being hungover to linger in her skull. But she couldn’t help but think about it; the woman’s absolute persistence—her willingness to give up her life—everything kept pulling at her attention, calling for her to think harder about it in order to come up with a solution to everything that made sense. It was even more maddening when Vivienne knew that an answer was just something she would be unable to provide.   
She sighed and grabbed her phone off of the sink, opening the bathroom door again.  
She pulled back the covers a little and slid slowly beneath the sheets. She was beginning to edge herself down a little to get comfortable when Brock stirred and pushed his hand over her waist and then up so it rested on her chest above her heart. His palm was warm and Vivienne felt goosebumps race along her arms and legs with the pleasure of feeling its heat pull into her skin. She pressed closer to him, liking how his touch made her forget how broken she was feeling.   
“God, Vi,” she heard him mutter, “Your legs are fucking cold.”  
“Oh, grow a pair and go back to sleep.”  
Brock pushed his other arm under her neck and pulled her closer. “I have a pair and it’s hard to sleep when your cold ass is pushed against them.”   
Vivienne reached back and ruffled Brock’s hair. “Boo-hoo.”  
Brock wasn’t having it and he reached up and caught her wrist “Stop that.”  
“Make me,” Vivienne turned over to face him and she pulled her wrist out of his grip.   
Brock stretched his free arm and pushed his palm over one eye. “You sleep any, Vi?”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter.”  
“Mmm yeah it does.”  
Vivienne sighed, but she really didn’t want to think about the night before.  
“We did what we had to last night,” said Brock. Vivienne assumed it was meant to be reassuring. It didn’t necessarily have that affect upon her.  
“Ughhh,” groaned Vivienne. “Please let’s not talk about that. It’s too early.”  
“Alright,” said Brock. “Fine, then go back to bed.”  
“I can’t.”  
“Vivienne.”  
Vivienne looked across the pillow at him. “Brock,” she said, mocking the irritation in his tone.   
“Get out of bed and make me some coffee, then. You know where the coffee maker is…”  
“Make your own fucking coffee. Do I look like a fucking housewife?”  
Brock decided to ignore her and he turned over to face the other direction, pulling the sheets up over his chest and closing his eyes.   
Vivienne pushed herself off of the mattress. “Lazy ass,” she muttered. 

 

Cooper hadn’t slept at all. His conscious was dripping with heavy, heavy guilt. He knew what needed to happen within the next few days, and he also knew that everything that was bound to unfold would do so because he had told Rumlow everything that had transpired the night before. Everything. And Rumlow was a man with insatiable loyalty to the cause. He wouldn’t let anything jeopardize Insight.  
His phone buzzed on the bedside table. It had been going off since he had gotten home. Jack was texting him—he had known something was off and Cooper had been on the brink of telling him, but he was so ashamed of what he had done that he didn’t want anyone else to know about it.   
He crushed the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray beside his phone and collapsed back onto his bed.   
When he closed his eyes he could see Donahue’s face—the look of horror in her eyes the night before plagued him and he replayed his instinctive reaction to pull the trigger over and over in his head, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t have…  
She would have known, but surely she had an idea about the STRIKE team’s intentions already? The woman had said too much and after Russia and Cambodia, surely Donahue wasn’t so blinded by her infatuation with Rumlow that she would let all of the STRIKE team’s questionable measures slip…  
Cooper opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling and the fan that spun lazily around and around.   
Rumlow was quick and efficient. He would do what needed to be done as soon as he had the opportunity.   
Cooper reached for his phone. He scrolled through the messages Jack had sent without reading them. He didn’t want to be tempted. He opened a new message.   
“I’m fine,” he texted. He pressed the send button.   
Cooper watched as a check mark appeared below his message showing that Jack had seen it.   
There was no reply. That was what he had been hoping for. 

 

Brock brushed his teeth, locking eyes with himself in the mirror across from him. Vivienne was in the shower across the bathroom and the steam that wafted over the glass doors pressed against his reflection. He had pretended to sleep earlier, but in reality he had probably slept less than Vivienne. He had been thinking and planning everything out—the real mission the night before had gone smoothly enough, but the cover had been a disaster—a completely unforeseen disaster. He looked across at Vivienne’s vague silhouette.   
“Glad I got showered before you used all of the hot water,” he said.  
“Shut up. The water pressure at my apartment sucks, so just let me enjoy this.”  
Brock wanted to smile, but he had other things on his mind.   
It had to be soon. Cooper had made it seem like Vi had heard a lot and that just wasn’t acceptable. Brock had kept her at his place so that he could keep an eye on her, but time was running out before they had to be at work the next day and something needed to happen between that moment and the beginning of their shift. Something clean and untraceable. Brock’s mind had been running all night on how to execute this part of the plan. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about it before—ever since he had failed to kill her in Russia, he had been planning the best way to eliminate her in case the need ever arose. It wasn’t a thought process he liked to partake in, but it wasn’t something that he could afford to ignore. Everything came second to the cause, including her.   
“Well finish up, Vi. There are places to be.”  
The Fawcett turned off abruptly and Vivienne pulled the sliding glass door open. Beads of water were dripping from her shoulders and her hair was wet and mussed. Brock smirked a little—he couldn’t help it really. Regardless of the uneasiness that lingered in his mind about her, she still had this strange hypnotic effect upon him. A siren song emitting singularly from the way she looked at him.   
He doubted that there was very much she wouldn’t do for him, but her infatuation with him wasn’t exactly the issue that was in question.   
“Stop looking at me like that.” Vivienne said snapping her fingers and pointing at the towel behind him. “I’m a lady, not a steak.”  
Brock buttoned his shirt, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Who says?”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “I do. Get me a towel.”  
“But I like the view better right now without it.”  
Without much warning, Vivienne pounced on him, throwing her arms around his neck.   
“Vivienne! Jesus!”  
She smiled up at him. “You should’ve just gotten me a towel.”  
“You’re getting my shirt all wet and—“  
Vivienne pressed her lips to his, interrupting him and beckoning that flame to reignite beneath his heart. He backed toward the wall, his breath leaving his lungs with a huff when she pushed him against it firmly.   
“Vivienne—“ He said between her passionate kisses, “Vi—“  
She undid the button of his pants. “I didn’t even have to tell you to say my name,” she crooned, pulling his earlobe playfully between her teeth.  
Brock’s knees felt weak. He was so ready to give in to her like he had already done so many times, but it would be that much harder to do what needed to be done. She pulled his zipper down.  
“Nnnhh Vi… C’mon…” He breathed. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could make himself stop her, but he couldn’t let anything interfere with his plan. Insight came first.  
She grabbed his hand with a smirk and guided it down over her chest, turning his hand when it reached her abdomen so that his fingers were pointed down, brushing over her soft skin. Brock’s jaw went slack and Vivienne pressed her forehead to his, pushing his fingers down, down…  
Vivienne’s phone started to buzz from where it was sitting on the edge of the sink.   
The distraction gave Brock a fighting chance. “You need to get that?”  
Vivienne snorted. “Do you want me to?”   
Brock was drawn back into his trance again by the way her lips were parted. “Want you to…I…what.”  
Vivienne pushed his middle finger up inside of her with a sigh that made Brock throb in anticipation that he wished he didn’t have.   
“That’s what I thought,” she said. The phone stopped buzzing.  
She pressed closer to him, ready to kiss him again.   
It took everything he had, but Brock turned away from her. He could sense her immediately stiffen. “What.”  
Brock couldn’t look at her. “It’s not you, Vi. I just don’t have the time for this.”  
Vivienne stepped away from him. “That’s a first.” Her tone lacked empathy.   
Brock pulled his soaking shirt away from where it was plastered to his chest. “We got later for this—I’ll make it up to you.”  
“Oh please. Where have you got to be? We have the rest of the day off.”  
Brock took off his shirt again and tossed it into the laundry basket, walking back into the bedroom to find dry clothes to wear. The distance from her helped a little to clear his head. “I have a report that I have to write for the mission. Then you can do whatever you want when I’m done. We can have the rest of the day together.”  
There was a silence, and then “Fine.”  
He looked over his shoulder at her, sensing her exasperation. Vivienne shrugged at him, wrapping a towel around herself. He saw her grab her phone before she slammed the bathroom door.   
He clenched his teeth, but the annoyance was momentary—her reaction was his fault. He knew he shouldn’t let himself care so much. It would certainly make things so much easier if he didn’t.  
His phone buzzed from where it lay on his dresser. He glanced at it. It was Jack. “We need to talk”.   
Brock picked up his phone and cleared his throat, looking around for his keys. “I’m going out to get coffee, Vivienne. Do you want any?”  
He heard her laugh from the bathroom, but it was humorless and icy. “I made coffee this morning, remember...?”  
Brock sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember.” He muttered. “I’m going out for some for me. I’ll be back in a bit. Just stick around and I’ll make this up to you, Vivienne.”

“You keep saying that,” Vivienne mumbled, looking coolly at herself in the mirror. It was embarrassing to be rejected like that, but she tried not to think about it too much. The mission had been a mess, so he probably did need the extra time to gather all of what had happened into a report. But come on—it wouldn’t have taken that long to show her a little affection. She grimaced at her reflection. It had really seemed like he had been looking for an excuse not to get back under the sheets with her, which made her feel uneasy and a little self-conscious.   
She swiped the screen on her phone to see who had called her. Lucky’s face popped up in the little icon she had set for Clint. Her mouth twitched into a smile. She had to admit—he was always there to save the day.   
She tapped into their messages and opened a new one. The line blinked while she tried to think of something to say.   
Her phone buzzed in her hands while she was thinking and a new message bubble popped up from Clint.   
“You ok?”  
Vivienne laughed—it was an abrupt burst of emotion, totally unexpected. It was so out of place that she covered her mouth even though she was alone. She texted back.  
“I’m ok, Clint. Let’s talk. Charlie’s tonight?”  
His text back didn’t miss a beat. “Charlie’s it is.”

 

Steve and Bradshaw had been sitting in the same room for hours digging through an immense volume of files that went back to the very beginning of the STRIKE team. If the STRIKE team was dirty, there would most likely be a slip-up somewhere. Rumlow was a perfectionist, but he wasn’t perfect. A human mistake was bound to have been made in one of the reports over the past several years. It could be as small as a pair of dates not matching up. It was monotonous, but Fury didn’t trust anyone else to do the work.   
The hours were broken by the occasional cross-check that seemed to be the only occasion for conversation. Even then, it was business and they didn’t linger within the bounds of socializing. Bradshaw seemed to have picked up on the fact that Steve wasn’t really in the mood to offer light conversation, so she had been silent. Steve was glad for that—he didn’t want his present emotions about their situation to impact the overall friendship he had built with her. He understood why she was so keen on agreeing with Fury; she was a soldier, too, and he could relate to her unquestioning loyalty in that sense. He just didn’t agree with her morals.   
He scrolled through the mission report he had opened on his screen. It was the twentieth one he had begun to comb through that day. A name had come up several times in the past couple reports. Agent Brady. From what Steve read, it appeared that Agent Brady had been a new recruit that Rumlow had started training. He seemed to have been the only aspect of the STRIKE team that had changed throughout the course of its existence, since all of the members of the team now had been the founding crew, except for Donahue.   
Steve looked across at Bradshaw. Her face was lit by the blue glow of the screen in front of her. Judging by her expression, she didn’t seem to be enjoying the process any more than he was.   
“Bradshaw,” he said.  
She raised an eyebrow to indicate that she was listening.   
“Have you come across any information on an agent in the reports you’ve read…an Agent Brady?”  
“Yeah. A few times. Why?”  
“Well,” said Steve. “It just seems like something that might be worth looking into.”  
Bradshaw looked across at him. “Why?”  
Steve sighed. “It’s like he was there and then he wasn’t. He was mentioned starting three years ago and then it seems like he just disappeared.”  
“You think he could point us in the direction of some dirt? The rest of these reports are spotless—like—too clean.”  
“I know.” Steve clicked back to the heart of the archive and then keyword searched “Agent Brady”. He opened the first file that was at the top, which happened to be the Agent’s personal file. The only reason it would be shared like that would be if the agent was…  
“Killed in action,” read Steve. He scrolled through the Agent’s profile. “That was a little over three months that he spent on the STRIKE team before he was killed. Not very long.”  
“Hm,” said Bradshaw. “Unfortunately, unless you have some mystical Ouija powers that I don’t know about, it’s going to be pretty hard getting the scoop from a dead guy.”   
“It’s not really what I want to know from him,” said Steve. “It’s that not a single one of these reports has disclosed the death of an Agent. It’s just like he was there and then he wasn’t. It’s the only thing that I can find that seems out of place in any of these mission reports.”  
“Intriguing.”  
“I’m serious,” said Steve. “It just stands out because he’s the only guy who was admitted to the team that hadn’t been there from the beginning. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”  
“I see what you did there,” said Bradshaw, pointing at him with a smile. “STRIKE, get it?”  
Steve sighed.   
“I’m sorry,” said Bradshaw. “I’m just hungry and tired and I know there’s something off about the STRIKE team for sure, but it’s going to be close to impossible to prove it. It could very well be that this dead guy could link STRIKE to some dark secrets that Rumlow has swept under the carpet. It’s also possible that Rumlow didn’t report it because he could have been ashamed or something—to have your first trainee KIA is pretty defeating. Seeing something like that on paper doesn’t only tarnish a reputation, it serves as a reminder.”  
Steve looked back at his screen. “You’re implying he has a conscience and not only that, but he feels guilty. It’s a nice alibi, but I just don’t buy it.”   
“Yeah,” said Bradshaw. “I suppose I don’t either, but I don’t really see what we can do about Brady. There’s no way to get his story.”  
Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well that’s not entirely correct.”  
Bradshaw squinted at him. “What do you mean?”  
“Donahue,” said Steve. “Fury put Donahue on the team himself and we know for a fact that Fury isn’t part of this.”  
“Donahue also had a duty to report back to Fury if she noticed anything that might trigger further investigation, but she seems to have forgotten that,” said Bradshaw. “What makes you think that she would tell us what she hasn’t told Fury?”  
Steve sat back in his chair, thinking about that evening a little while back when he had been on his way to Fury’s office. Something felt wrong letting the idea even make it as far as his lips, but he knew that they needed to get to the bottom of this, whatever it took. “Well… she doesn’t have to tell us…”  
He could see that he had Bradshaw’s attention.  
“Well who would she tell?”

 

“Clint,” said Vivienne, emphasizing the sharpness of the “t” at the end of his name. She pressed her phone to her ear with her shoulder while she pulled on her shoes. She could tell that Brock wasn’t happy about her evening plans with the guy, mostly because of the way he kept pretending like he didn’t know who she was talking about even though this wasn’t the first time she had mentioned him. She heard the static rush over the line when he exhaled. She could just picture him massaging his temple and, as much as she hated to admit it, his annoyance gave her some satisfaction.   
“Is this because of earlier, Vi?”  
Vivienne stomped into her other shoe. “Tch. Don’t be so conceited. It has nothing to do with that.”  
“Vivienne. Listen. I’m serious about making this better. I need to see you tonight.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Uhuh.”  
“After? I’ll pick you up.”  
Vivienne shook her head to herself. “Brock. Really. Why is this so important to you?”  
There was a pause. Then, “It just is. You’re important to me, Vi.”  
Vivienne pressed her lips together closed her eyes. She waited, but nothing came to her that seemed appealing enough to say, so she settled with the least amount of interaction possible. “Mhm.”  
“So I’ll pick you up…?”  
“Sure, Brock.”  
“Ten?”  
Vivienne waved her hand around as if that would indicate her lack of care. “Sure.”  
“I’ll be waiting outside.”  
“Yeah, yeah,” said Vivienne. “Expensive black SUV. I got it. You can lure me in with candy. I’m more likely to get in the car that way.”  
“Whatever you want.”  
Vivienne sighed. “It was a joke,” she said. She terminated the call.


	30. Hellbender Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation that could have ended differently, a plan that gets unexpectedly abandoned, a mission that saves a life.

Charlie’s offered warm refuge from the cold rain that was starting to fall outside. It was like walking back into a memory of a better time—the smell of spilled beer and wax from the frequently polished bar top, the funny inhabitants that mostly kept to their nooks and shied away from socialization. When she walked in, it all hit her at once like a bucket of warm water being poured over her head. Goosebumps raced over her arms as the feeling enveloped her. Her lifeline was sitting at the other end of the room.   
Vivienne beamed when she saw him, completely forgetting that there had ever been any awkwardness between them. “Hey!” She said, walking over to him and setting her coat over the back of the chair beside his.  
Clint smiled, too. “Hey, yourself. Long time no see.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “I know. I’m sorry. We definitely owe each other a talk, I think.”  
Clint nodded. “That’s why I bought the cheesy fries.”  
Vivienne sat down, feeling like her chest was going to burst from the surreal affection of the moment. Clint pushed the basket of fries over to her with a wink. Vivienne laughed. “You remembered.”  
“Of course. One of the best nights ever… I learned about your childhood crush on Val Kilmer before he looked like the guy that ate Val Kilmer.”   
Vivienne took a fry. “Oh my God, you’re so mean.”  
“I know,” said Clint. “Above it all, I remember getting, like, three baskets of these fries and feeling awful the next day. But you said that no matter how gross you felt, you would still eat a hundred if you could.”  
“True,” said Vivienne. “You have a good memory.”  
Clint beckoned to the bartender. “Well I only retain the stuff that matters to me. My new password I had to make yesterday to log onto my personal account in the Tri-system? Poof. Gone.”  
Vivienne felt her cheeks redden a little, but Clint wasn’t looking at her, so it was ok. The bartender came over and she ordered a shot of Hennessey and a rum and coke.   
Clint took a swig of his beer before turning to face Vivienne. “So,” he said. “How’s having Cap on the team?”  
The mention of the Captain conjured the memory of him that night in Austria, something that Vivienne wished she could forget. “Good, I guess. But can we not talk about work?”  
“Yeah,” said Clint. “Of course. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a mission. I forgot how much it drains you.”  
Vivienne nodded. She sensed Clint reading her and backpedaling for something else to occupy their time.   
Vivienne cut right to the chase. She leaned toward him. “What happened that night in the gym?”  
“I—I—,” Clint was caught off guard and Vivienne felt awful for plunging him into awkwardness like that, but she couldn’t help that the words had just come out so suddenly.  
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just..I just need to know. I don’t want us stumbling through the night waiting to talk about this. I think it was probably the first thing on both of our minds when we walked through those doors.”  
Clint’s cheeks reddened. “I know,” he said. “That’s fair.”  
Vivienne waited, pretending not to be as invested in whatever he might say as she actually was.   
Clint met her eyes, a tight smile pulling at his mouth. “I just care about you a lot, Vivienne, if you want the full truth. I don’t know why I kissed you…well, I do, but I think maybe we both want separate things. I can handle that. I just want you to be part of my life again. I’ve just missed you a lot.”  
Vivienne nodded. “Well I’ve missed you, too.”  
They gazed at each other, but it didn’t feel like things had been completely resolved yet. Vivienne didn’t know what was missing, but she felt like the silence was discouraging Clint from saying anything else.  
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You practice that in the bathroom mirror?”  
Clint looked down at his beer. “Was it that obvious?”  
Vivienne took a sip from her rum and coke. “I wish everything really was as uncomplicated as you just made that sound.”  
Clint bit his lip and nodded before looking back across at her. “Me, too.”  
There was a silence again. Vivienne got the feeling like maybe she had been expected to say something more significant, but she really didn’t know how she felt and she didn’t want to drag Clint through a long-winded examination of her feelings. She didn’t want to out him through that because she cared about him, too. The extent to which she cared about him was barred, though, by her dogged loyalty to a different man that seemed to have no problem at all dragging her through the mud with him.   
“And I know you hate it when I talk shit about Rumlow,” said Clint, as if he was reading her mind. “But I just wish that somehow you could see how unhappy you are. It’s none of my business, I know, and stop me if I’m stepping over the line here, but he puts you through so much unnecessary crap. All of the secrecy and the guilt-tripping and obvious brainwashing…”  
Vivienne pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath in. Clint really only knew the half of it—the half that was his perspective over everything—biased, most likely, by whatever feelings he had for her himself. She didn’t understand why she bothered to go on defending Brock, though. It did seem like his intentions weren’t necessarily matched with her best interests in him.   
“Vi?”  
Vivienne was only just aware that she had been staring off into space. She blinked back into reality. “I know how you feel about him, Clint.”  
“Well, it’s not just how I feel about him—“  
“I’m not trying to argue…”  
“I know,” said Clint. “And I’m sorry. I just hate seeing him get you down like he does.”  
Vivienne took her shot of Hennessey and looked over her shoulder at the rest of the room. She needed to be drunk for this—not just for facing all of these confessions, but also to defend Brock and sound like she knew what the hell she was talking about. She set the glass down and reached for her rum and coke.   
“You used to be a really happy person Vivienne, like, all the time. I’m not trying to offend you and as I’m saying this, I can totally see how you might take this the wrong way, but you just aren’t happy anymore.”  
“Thanks, Clint.”  
“I’m just asking for a little open-mindedness here. Sometimes when you’re so close to something, you don’t see it right away.” Clint said. “Trust me, I know these things.”  
“Ok,” said Vivienne. “Sure, but you don’t know these things. This stuff that we’re talking about—it’s my life and my problems. You aren’t me, Clint—you don’t really know—“  
“I want to know. I want to help—“  
“It doesn’t come across like you want to help…”  
Clint rubbed his forehead. “I’m trying, here…”  
There was a silence. The fries by this point were already getting cold and they had barely been touched. Vivienne swiped away a large drop of perspiration that ran down the outside of her glass.   
“I just know how he is, Vi. Just from observation. Believe it or not, I’m pretty perceptive and from what I can see, he really just takes you for granted.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne, “But you still haven’t seen both sides of this, either. He’s actually pretty affectionate when he wants to be.”  
“When he wants to—“ Clint shook his head. “Vivienne, what I’m trying to say is that the guy clearly doesn’t deserve you.”  
“What—“ said Vivienne, trying unsuccessfully to pull herself from the offense. “And you do?!?”  
“OK.” Clint said, holding up a hand. “I didn’t mean to turn this night backwards. This is my fault.”  
Vivienne sighed and looked across the bar at the door. “No, no, it’s mine, too. We came here to talk about other stuff, not Brock.”  
“Yeah,” said Clint. He didn’t sound convinced.   
“How’s Lucky?”  
“Lucky’s good.”  
Vivienne nodded. There was another electric pause. Clint was studying his beer and Vivienne knew, from everything he had said and done that night, that all of this was really weighing heavily on his mind. She knew he was invested in her wellbeing and all she was doing was shutting him down because she didn’t have the backbone to hear any of it. She knew he was just telling her what he believed, and she hadn’t even considered the mental conflict he had probably gone through to say everything that he had.  
She knew that, because all of this was coming from him, her one defense was to react so poorly. It was all she could do to keep herself from confessing everything to him. Instead, she set down her glass and sighed.   
“I care about you, too Clint.” She said. “I meant what I said that night in the gym. I’m just really torn right now and, unless you’ve got some way to experience exactly what I have, I think it might be hard for you to understand everything.”  
Clint watched her, looking for something in her face. Vivienne didn’t know what.   
She shook her head, gazing across the room again. She couldn’t look at him. “I wish I didn’t still care about Brock, but I do. I also wish that all of the stuff between me and him didn’t suffocate what’s going on between us because you mean the world to me. You really do.”  
She could sense that Clint was still looking at her, but she didn’t want to look back at him. She had already admitted enough—his blue eyes had a habit of pulling the truth to the surface and she didn’t know if she was ready to tell him everything she had ever thought about him or what he really meant to her. She was in an unbalanced state right now, but saying more might tip the scales and she knew she wasn’t ready for that kind of shift, especially not with everything that was fighting for her attention in her head at the moment.  
“I know I can’t change your mind about him, Vi,” said Clint slowly. “But it kills me knowing that he’s hurting you like he is. I wish I didn’t feel the need to get so deeply involved with all of this, but I can’t ignore it because, Vivienne, I… I L…I like you a lot and I have a hard time just standing by and saying nothing. Just…just tell me that you don’t feel the same way and I swear everything can go back to the way it was and I won’t keep bothering you about him.”  
Vivienne hadn’t anticipated all of the emotional upheaval when she had taken the cab to Charlie’s earlier. If she had known it would happen, she didn’t know if she would have come, but she knew it was necessary.   
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Clint.”  
“Vivienne—“  
Vivienne knew Brock wouldn’t be waiting yet since it was only five past nine. She didn’t know if she still even wanted to see him that night anyways. She didn’t want to accidentally say something that she couldn’t take back.  
“I have to go,” she said, getting off of the bar stool and shrugging into her coat.   
“Vi, please. I’m sorry if I pushed you—“  
“No,” said Vivienne. “You didn’t. Don’t be sorry. I probably shouldn’t have come here tonight anyways. I just have to go.”  
She turned and started out of the bar, feeling how hot her cheeks were only when the cold drizzle met her at the door, cooling her face down significantly.   
She knew it was an asshole move to run from all of this, but she didn’t know what else to do.   
She looked around for a taxi, but the street was relatively quiet. That’s when she saw Brock’s black Mercedes G Class parked on the other side of the road. Something pulsed through her—it wasn’t fear, but it was something akin to it. She didn’t know why she felt that way. Maybe it was because he was there ridiculously early. She thought fleetingly about just ditching him and hailing a taxi, but she knew he probably had already spotted her and if she ran, it was just going to make things worse.  
She glanced in both directions and then started across the road toward his SUV. When she came closer, the ignition was turned and the headlights came on. She walked through the swathe of light in front of the car and opened the passenger-side door.   
She slid into the car and closed the door behind her, looking across at Brock.   
“Why are you here so early?”  
Brock Shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. “I didn’t want to miss you.”  
Vivienne looked out the window at Charlie’s as it passed by. “I don’t want to do this tonight, Brock.”  
Brock fiddled with the volume on his stereo, turning it down so that the music wasn’t so loud. It didn’t help settle any of the tension in the car. Instead, the action made Vivienne’s heart beat a little faster.   
“Waiting any longer would have done more damage,” said Brock matter-of-factly.   
Vivienne looked back across at him. “I don’t think it really would have mattered.”  
Street lamps flitted by, throwing orange stripes into motion over the car’s hood. They turned onto an exit that led toward the outer edges of the city.  
“Where are we going?” Asked Vivienne.  
“You’ll see.”  
They drove further into the night, the minutes passing by in anxious silence. Vivienne didn’t know why he had to be so reserved about everything. At times, his determination and fixation toward particular ambitions made her feel uneasy, but she knew that the trait was just part of who he was. She gazed out the window, watching patches of lights pass in the darkness of the night. 

Brock’s heart was in his ears. He could feel his elevated blood pressure pound through his neck and head and arms. After all of this time, though he knew it would have ended this way, he still wanted more time with her. Insight’s schedule was merciless, though, and he was powerless to slow things for the sake of the personal feelings that plagued him on this particular matter.   
He had met Jack earlier. Surprisingly, Cooper hadn’t let him know about the incident with Vivienne and Jack had been losing his mind trying to figure out what was wrong with his teammate. It surprised Brock sometimes how much the guy cared for Cooper.  
Brock had told him about the incident and his plan to fix it. Even then, the idea of eliminating Vivienne had seemed foreign to him. It was a task he knew he could perform, but whether he actually felt like he wanted to or not was a whole other problem. He didn’t know how much she had heard, but he couldn’t just ask her without arousing some suspicion. The possibility of her having heard nothing incriminating was what caused his palms to get sweaty on the wheel. His reaction to the present circumstances were identical to the first time he had ever had to kill a man. He had been unsure about the guiltiness of the victim then, too, but it hadn’t stopped him from putting a bullet in his skull.   
He signaled to the right and merged onto an exit ramp that curved down beneath and through the highway toward the part of the city that was more industrially dominated.   
Vivienne was different, though. She was annoying a lot of the time and the emotional baggage she threw at him wouldn’t be missed, but she still had an undeniable grip on his heart that he couldn’t pry away from, no matter how hard he tried.   
The headlights bounced over the gravel as they slowed to a stop. The large empty parking lot for the fairground offered a perfect location to get far enough away from any possible witnesses. He had planned this all out—he had the tarp and shovel in the back of the car. He had already dug a hole while she had been at the bar with Clint. It was good that she was upset—it was better than what he had hoped that she wasn’t looking at him the way she did sometimes with those eyes. He had always said he could pull the trigger, but if she had been as deeply infatuated with him as she had been before, it would have taken everything from him not to turn the car back around and prolong things further.   
As he reached for the keys to pull then from the ignition, his muscles felt submerged in lead-heavy water. He sensed her looking at him and he glanced across the car to meet her gaze, realizing only just then that she was waiting for a response from him.   
“What…?” He asked.  
“Where the hell are we? Why are we in the middle of—of—“ Vivienne motioned to the blackness outside her window in irritation. “Some random-ass parking lot?”  
Brock’s heart lurched. “I wanted to show you something.”  
Vivienne was watching him closely. Sometimes Brock felt like she could see right through the protective layer of bullshit he built for her sake.  
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”  
“Because it wouldn’t have been the same.” Brock reached for his door handle and started to open the drivers’ side door. “C’mon.”  
“No.”  
She didn’t make any moves for her seatbelt. Her answer was firm and Brock knew that he would have to work a little harder for her compliance. Vivienne wasn’t stupid and he didn’t want to have to dirty his car.  
He hesitantly closed his door again, placing one hand on the wheel and wiping the other over his mouth, trying to think of a good way to get her out of the passenger seat.   
“What is your problem, Vi?” He asked finally after they sat in a tense silence for a few minutes. “Do you not want to fix this?”  
Vivienne looked skeptical. “Do you?”  
“I don’t know what you mean.”  
Vivienne looked up at the ceiling of the car. “I think you do. And it’s this same argument every time—I’m trying hard to hold onto this because I want it, and you say you want it too, but you keep pushing me away. I just don’t get you.”  
Brock let a long breath go out of his nose. He looked out at the blackness past the windshield.   
“Is it a work thing? Like, I know technically we’re breaking our contracts by sleeping together, but you didn’t seem to have a problem with it before.” Vivienne said slowly. “Or maybe it’s the age difference? I know it’s not typical, but I didn’t think it mattered that much…”  
“Vi, listen. It’s none of that. It’s really not you at all,” said Brock.   
Vivienne was silent for a minute before she looked across at him. “Bullshit.”  
Brock’s stomach turned a little. “No…I don’t know why you would think that.”  
In the darkness of the car, he could see the wet glisten of a tear rolling down her cheek.   
This is how it would begin. He hated it when she cried—it seemed like things had a habit of melting—anger, intentions…  
He wouldn’t let her do that to him again. Not now.   
“I hate this part of us,” Vivienne said, her voice raw. “I hate everything that makes me so angry at you for all of these little things. Every time this happens, I feel like I’m the only person who wants to fix this. I don’t even know what to think right now…you’ve never tried to make things better before, so now…”  
“Now I’m trying, Vivienne, ok?” said Brock, finishing the thought for her. “I need for this to happen…”  
She looked at him for a long time before her fingers touched the handle on the door. Brock’s heartbeat quickened.  
His phone rang, shattering the moment.   
Brock fought every urge to pick it up and throw it out of the car. Instead he grabbed it and looked at the screen. It was Pierce. He looked across at Vivienne. He needed to get this.   
Brock yanked the door handle and pushed out of the car, swiping the answer icon and pulling the phone to his ear. He closed his eyes and inhaled, collecting himself before he answered.   
“Yes, Sir?”  
“We have a situation in Chicago. It needs to be dealt with immediately.”  
Brock clenched his teeth and pushed the tips of his fingers into his temple. “I’m in the middle of something.”  
“It can wait.”  
“It really can’t.”  
“This needs to have been done yesterday, Agent Rumlow. Get your team to Chicago now. No Rogers and no Bradshaw. They can’t be a part of this.”  
Rumlow lowered his voice. “What about Donahue?”  
“You didn’t seem to have a concern about her before. She’s seen seventh heaven. Anything that happens with her is entirely on you, since you’ve been brilliant enough to involve her to this point.”  
“Sir—“  
“Get there.”  
“I—“  
Pierce hung up. Brock stared out over the parking lot. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or submerged in foreboding. Either way, all of this was entirely on him.


	31. Hellbender Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint gets a new job to do. Cap is a little grossed out. Cooper can't believe Vivienne is alive and asking for that king sized snickers, and Rumlow goes on a rampage after an unknown trigger.

Clint turned on his phone and re-read the message Steve had sent him. He was early, obviously, but he would rather show up early and try to figure out what this might all be about than arrive late and be thrown into another discombobulating riptide that evening.  
His friend’s message had been cryptic; a random text out of the blue that simply read that he needed to meet Clint alone in the parking lot of the coffee shop beside the Washington Monument…at 10. The coffee shop had since closed for the night and Clint felt a little awkward sitting in his car outside the joint alone. He really hadn’t spent a lot of time with the Captain over the last month, so he wasn’t exactly sure what this might be about, but it seemed like he was in the dark about a lot of things recently. He had been more engrossed in SHIELD work recently than with the Avengers, and to be honest, he enjoyed it more than being tossed around like a ragdoll with very breakable bones amongst his friends with superpowers. He felt more at home with his field team.  
He hadn’t seen Natasha in a while—the last time he had talked to her she had been pretty quiet and aloof. She had been relatively nonexistent for several weeks and it seemed like she wanted to spare him the heartache just as much as he wanted to spare her, so they just hadn’t talked to each other, but the nonverbal communication had been pretty clear. He didn’t know what he had done wrong this time, but he was relatively sure that he couldn’t possibly be the only one to blame.  
The last interaction with anything pertaining to the Avengers had been a phone call from Tony. Even that had been fairly worthless, considering he had been calling to drunkenly invite Clint to an elite rooftop bar at one in the morning. He must have not been able to get a hold of anyone else.  
Clint patted the steering wheel and was about to turn the key so that he could at least listen to some music, but the faint rumble of a motorcycle engine caught his attention and he paused. He looked up into his rearview mirror and recognized Steve’s bike as his friend pulled up and into a spot beside him. Clint got out of the car. Steve killed the ignition.  
“Cap,” he said, “I didn’t expect a text from you tonight.”  
Steve pushed out a kickstand and leaned his bike onto it, swinging his leg over so that he was standing in front of Clint. “Yeah, me neither honestly.”  
“What’s this all about?”  
“Ahm…” Steve looked around. The park was completely quiet. “I need to ask you a favor.”  
Clint watched Steve as he scanned the darkened bushes and trees. He got a funny feeling that Cap wasn’t about to ask him to hang out sometime or invite him to get a beer.  
“Is there anything you need to tell me first..?” asked Clint when Steve finally attended to the conversation at hand.  
Steve looked at Clint—Clint felt like he was being x-rayed. He unintentionally held his breath as if that might help convince Steve that he was worthy of whatever information Steve had to spill.  
“I’m not sure,” said Steve. “It’s not that I wouldn’t tell you, but the favor might impact the necessity of me telling you these things.”  
Clint squinted at him. “Okaay…”He hated favors. “What’s the favor, then?”  
“I need some information about STRIKE.”  
Clint rubbed the back of his neck. “Well you’re talking to the wrong guy. I’m not on the team… Why don’t you just ask Agent Rumlow? He’s head of STRIKE.”  
Steve sighed. “He’s the guy I need information on.”  
“Oh.” Clint thought about it for a second and then the realization hit him. “Wait why do you need info on Rumlow? Is there something we should know about him?” His heart hammered against his ribcage. He had just seen Vivienne get into the guy’s car an hour ago. “Shit…”  
Steve eyed him. “What?”  
Clint felt sweaty. He needed to call her. “Just tell me why you’re looking into him.”  
“We aren’t sure yet,” said Steve. “Another agent and I are investigating some stuff about STRIKE and I know you’re friends with Agent Donahue…”  
Clint’s heart dropped. “What about her?”  
“She could be somehow wrapped up in all of this.” He seemed to sense Clint’s distress. “It doesn’t seem like she’s in any danger, considering her…status…with Rumlow.”  
“Thank God,” said Clint. He looked up at Steve with a wince. “Wait. You know about the whole relationship thing?”  
Steve squinted at him. “What?”  
Clint immediately felt guilty for having let the words spill from his mouth so unconsciously. He thought by “status”, maybe Steve had already figured it out. He tried to think of something to say to protect Vivienne’s reputation, but his mouth hung open and the words that had come so freely before were having a hard time forming a sufficient explanation.  
“Are Rumlow and Donahue…involved…?”  
“Yeah…” said Clint slowly. “I think so, but it’s not that serious and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to go on much longer…She doesn’t need to get in trouble for this, Cap.”  
Steve shook his head. “This just keeps getting worse.”  
“What do you need from Vivienne?”  
“She’s the one factor that’s changed in the STRIKE team since they were launched…apart from an Agent Brady, and he’s dead.”  
“Who—wait. What does that mean…?”  
Steve folded his arms. “That’s what we are trying to figure out. What I’m asking here is that you might be able to get some information from Donahue, since you guys are close. I know that’s asking a lot.”  
Clint bit his lip. “Yeah…I want to help you Cap, but we aren’t really at our best right now.”  
“But you care about her—“  
“Of course.”  
“I said that she wasn’t in danger at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that her life won’t be threatened in the future. Or at the very least, her career.”  
Steve was pushing him and Clint knew it. He knew that Steve wouldn’t be asking this unless he really needed it. He also knew that right now, maybe Vivienne wasn’t looking out for her own best interests and maybe he could help her by helping Cap.  
“What would you need to know?”

 

 

“Seventh Heaven again…”  
Cooper yawned and stretched his arms upward, pushing his fingers through his hair and pulling it back into a messy bun. He was tired and he really just needed the night off. “It’s impossible to get a fucking lid on this stuff. Can’t everyone just figure out some lie to tell people about it? Like, isn’t there a way for it not to be traced back to HYDRA? Let’s just let the junkies have it.” He looked across at Jack, who was driving them both to the Triskelion. He had been silent for most of the drive. Cooper didn’t know why Jack would be upset with him.  
“You good?”  
“Fine.”  
There was a long silence. Cooper knew that if he waited long enough, Jack would spill his guts. It was the way he operated.  
Jack turned onto the exit street for the Triskelion. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about this whole thing with Donahue?”  
“Are you seriously mad about that?”  
“No.”  
Cooper didn’t buy it, but he also didn’t really want to talk about it. If Rumlow was really as motivated as he said he was, Donahue would have already been six feet under by now. He didn’t want to even think about it. It was his fault.  
“Good,” he said.  
They pulled up to the gate and Rollins rolled down the truck window. Cooper passed him his ID badge.  
The gate opened and they drove through toward the parking deck. The night air swam into the car from Jack’s open window, and though it was enough to blow a few strands of hair back from Cooper’s face, it did little to help relax him.  
“I’m not mad, but why didn’t you tell me? You can let me help you, Tex”  
Cooper groaned. “Jesus Christ, Jack, just drop it already. I didn’t need help. Maybe I was just tryin’ to avoid all of this weirdness that you’re tryina stir up right now.”  
“Ok.” said Jack. “Don’t be such a prick.”  
Cooper scowled across the car at him, but Jack wasn’t looking. As soon as they pulled into a spot, Cooper got out of the car and yanked open the back door to get his gear. He could sense that Jack was watching him, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get this mission done and then be alone for a while. He didn’t want the questions or judgment or unwanted therapy session right now. He just needed to come to terms with the fact that he had probably just killed a friend of his based on the possibility of her having realized the truth about STRIKE.  
He had never really intended to become a part of HYDRA. He had just gotten swept up into everything after he had left Texas. They had offered him the opportunity to help extinguish the faction of mercenaries that had gunned down his wife and daughter and he had gotten on board without thinking twice. He was no stranger to cause and effect and he knew that sooner or later there would have been a problem with Donahue, but he hated that he had been the one to recognize it.  
“Hey—Your badge,” said Jack, holding up Cooper’s ID.  
Cooper walked around the truck and took it from him.  
The squeal of tires over the smooth parking deck surface ricocheted in the echo-y space and Cooper turned to see the familiar black SUV pull into the parking deck. He felt the blood drain from his cheeks.  
Vivienne was sitting in the passenger seat. She wasn’t even supposed to be there.  
Brock swung the car into the spot next to theirs, but he didn’t get out right away. It seemed like he was engrossed in what appeared to be a rather serious conversation with Vivienne. Whatever the hell happened, all Cooper knew was that Vivienne wasn’t dead. He looked back at Rollins, who seemed somewhat less surprised. Cooper was trying to decide if he should wait for Rumlow or follow Jack into the elevator across the lot as his companion made his exit. Cooper decided that he should probably follow him, but before he could pick his bag back up, Rumlow’s door opened. Immediately his eyes locked on Cooper’s.  
“Don’t ask,” he said. He walked past Cooper and opened the back of his car to get his own duffle bag.  
Cooper looked across the parking deck, but the elevator doors were already closing with Jack on the other side. He swallowed.  
Vivienne came around the other side of the car, swinging her bag over her shoulder. She looked haggard, but that didn’t seem to stop her from talking to him.  
“I could really use that king sized snickers right about now.”  
Cooper just looked at her. It surprised him how much her standing here—alive—impacted him. He didn’t think he could talk.  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “What.”  
He shook his head.  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Yes. I look like shit. Yes, I don’t give a fuck about anything right now and I just want to fucking go home. This asshole decided to drive me out to the middle of nowhere and waste my time and now he’s dragging me to Chicago. So yes, I want to die. Fucking shoot me or stop looking at me like that.”  
Brock shut the back of the car. “Lay off him, Vivienne. Everybody’s having a rough day, ok?”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes and threw a look at Brock over her shoulder. Once he had walked by on his way to the elevator, she turned back to Cooper.  
“Sorry,” she said. “I know that wasn’t cool. I’m just kinda pissed right now.”  
Cooper hoisted his bag over his shoulder and walked with her to the elevator. “It’s ok.”

 

The quinjet was completely silent as they took off. Usually there was a buzz of anticipation, but now some vacuum had sucked the air from the atmosphere and nobody spoke a word. Vivienne decided that it was probably for the best.  
The ride back into town had been trying. Brock had tried to insist that there was nothing wrong between them. He had tried to tell her that it was all in her head and that she was overreacting. Maybe she was, but all of the over-explanation on his part made it seem like she wasn’t. He had seemed different ever since they had come back from Austria. Vivienne didn’t know what had changed. The mission had gone badly, but she couldn’t imagine that that might impact whatever it was between them.  
She really wasn’t even that mad about that morning anymore—whatever anger bubbled around inside of her was almost entirely because of her frustration with the whole situation. She was stuck and she had no idea what to do about it. She was overwhelmed. The mission from the night before was still so vivid and the day following had seemed to stretch just far enough to clog itself to the brim with more problems. Vivienne knew that she wouldn’t be so pissed if she didn’t try to take on everything all at once, but that was just the way she was and she couldn’t help it.  
She plugged her earbuds into her phone and shuffled the music that she had stored. It was the same music that had been on there for the last month and she was getting bored of the playlist, but it was better than putting up with the deafening silence. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes while the music loaded.  
The familiar hum of the beginnings of that memorable Puccini song poured softly into her ears. She opened her eyes again, her finger hovering over the skip button, but she couldn’t do it. She looked across the quinjet to see Brock looking back at her. She held his gaze, trying so hard to recall that night and those dance steps. She really wanted to feel that way again, but it seemed like the world kept pulling her back from the verge of finding that same feeling.  
Maybe somehow he knew what she was thinking. She wished he did, but she drifted off into sleep before she could think about it any further.

 

Chicago was hazy and orange under the glow of the streetlamps. The smell of the smog was really pretty similar to DC, even though the night seemed a little colder and noisier. Brock had awakened her with a squeeze on the shoulder once they had reached the private airstrip. From there, they had been picked up by two Chicago police vans which would take them to the site of the Seventh heaven bust. Vivienne wondered why the police couldn’t just handle it. It seemed like drugs were drugs and they shouldn’t have been flown in from DC to pick up vials of the stuff if the cops were perfectly capable of picking it up themselves. The police seemed completely disinterested in being any part of the operation apart from providing a taxi service.  
She decided that she really didn’t want to think about it too hard; she was still groggy and she had bigger fish to fry.  
The vans stopped a block away from where the bust would take place—the house was in a dingy low-rent district and the majority of the houses on the blocks surrounding the location were boarded and gated.  
Vivienne got out of the van and re-checked her rifle. It was loaded, just like the last time she had checked and the time before that.  
“The house is number 118,” said Henley. “It’s five houses down from us and then across the alley, since we’re entering the perimeter from the back.”  
“That’s the best way to do it,” said Cooper. “Bend ‘em right over.”  
Vivienne saw Rollins shoot him a look. She couldn’t help but to smirk. She felt bad for having taken her frustration out on the Texan earlier.  
“Alright, team. Get into formation,” said Rumlow. “Cooper, I want you headed around the block to meet us. Send Henley your coordinates and get a good vantage point. We don’t want any strays.”  
Vivienne squinted a little, thinking about what Rumlow had said.  
“The rest of STRIKE with me. We go in and we seize the T7Hydro. That’s the priority above everything else.” Rumlow checked his gun and then cocked his head in the direction of the house. STRIKE moved out into the night.  
Vivienne caught up to Rumlow. “Wait. Are we killing these guys?”  
“This drug ain’t your average heroin, Kid.” Said Rumlow. “So that’s the idea, yeah. Get back into formation.”  
Vivienne fell back opposite from Henley. The situation had her attention now, not to mention her curiosity.  
They cut through the fifth driveway down and silently scaled the back fence into the alleyway.  
The house, once probably a cheery blue, appeared sickly-green in the alley light. The shutters were falling off and the light within dimly filtered through the torn screens on the windows. A chain-link fence lay flattened to the ground on one side of the back yard. The other side of the fence was barely hanging onto the rusted out poles that stuck up from the concrete.  
They closed on the house, weaving through the backyard and around sides of the dwelling. Vivienne brought up the back of the formation. She watched as the team disappeared around the corners of the house and adjusted her earpiece so that she could clearly hear the acknowledgement for her to proceed through the back door.  
“In position,” came Cooper’s voice over the comm line.  
“Copy,” said Rumlow. “Front entry breach in three, two, one—“  
Vivienne heard the sound of the door being kicked down from the other side of the house.  
“Donahue cover that exit.”  
“It’s covered,” said Vivienne, somewhat annoyed that Brock would expect any less of her.  
“Proceed, Donahue.”  
Vivienne kicked open the back door and almost collided with a man who was trying to escape out the back. She pushed him back and instinctively put two rounds into his chest. The silenced shots sounded so distant. She stepped over him and entered what appeared to be the kitchen. The entirety of what she saw took her breath away.  
The counters of the kitchen were brimming with cardboard boxes packed with foam and vials of T7Hydro. There had to be at least eight full boxes.  
She heard Cooper’s voice in her ear. “I caught two exiting from the windows on the East side of the house.”  
“Intel said there would be five offenders.” Came Rumlow’s voice. “We had one in the front hall. Donahue?”  
Vivienne stepped toward the boxes. “One in the back,” she said. She looked over the edge of the closest box. The clear watery liquid in the vials had somewhat of an iridescent glimmer to it. She was tempted to reach out and touch it, but she remembered the last time she had been present at a bust and she thought better of it.  
“We’re missing one,” said Rumlow. “Rollins and Henley, clear the second floor. Donahue, you make sure no one goes out the back. Cooper, you’ve got the street in case the last pile of shit decides to make his way home.”  
“Got it,” said Vivienne. She looked around to make sure that she wasn’t missing anything that might point to the last junkie’s whereabouts.  
She checked the dead guy’s phone that was sitting on the table, but he hadn’t received any recent messages.  
A vial of seventh heaven sat on the table. The cap had bee removed, but it seemed untouched. Without really thinking, Vivienne reached out and picked it up, screwing the cap back on. “Goddamn it,” she heard Brock mutter from the other room. The volume of his words let her know that he had turned off his mic. She stepped cautiously to the opening between the kitchen and the dining room to see what was the matter, stowing the vial in her vest to set amongst the others later. Brock had pulled his earpiece completely out and was wiping the sweat off of his forehead. He stepped over the bodies on the floor and went to the window, pulling at one of the straps on his Kevlar vest to loosen it a little. The house was humid and musty and the room did seem suffocating.  
Vivienne looked around at the crimson blood splattered over the walls like a Jackson Pollock painting. The blood in the carpet was still in the beginning stages of sinking into the already stained and dirty floor. Her eyes followed the mess around the room before finally settling on Brock’s tensed shoulders.  
She stepped over an arm on her way over to him. “You ok?”  
Brock nodded and wiped the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “Never better.”  
There was a moment before Vivienne decided that now wasn’t the time to press him. She listened to Rollins and Cooper wrapping things up outside in her earpiece. She stood still a little while longer, giving Brock a chance in case he wanted to spill something from his obviously troubled mind, but he didn’t and so she turned to walk out. She looked over her shoulder “Hey, I’m gonna…” She trailed off when she saw the look on Brock’s face. He had turned to face her, his lips slightly parted and his head slightly tilted to the side.  
“Do you hear that?”  
Vivienne stood still, listening. She didn’t hear anything. “What.”  
Brock held up his finger, signaling her to be quiet.  
Vivienne waited.  
Brock suddenly walked toward her and the door. “Move, move, move.”  
Vivienne moved to the side and followed him as his pace quickened through the house. They hurried out the front door and circled around to outside of the window Brock had just been standing at inside. There was a mangled wire mesh screen that opened to the crawlspace beneath the house directly under the window. The screen was torn at a corner and it hinted at the dank blackness beneath the house. Vivienne could barely make out a pitiful high-pitched crying sound.  
Brock looked back at her to see if she had heard it and she squinted back at him, just as invested as he was in finding out where the noise was coming from.  
Brock knelt next to the screen and cautiously reached for the corner that was pulled off of the frame. Vivienne knelt next to him as he grabbed the screen and yanked the rest of the mesh off of the crumbling rock exterior. Vivienne was suddenly overwhelmed with the smell of death and decay that yawned from the opening. She covered her mouth and nose with a hand and squinted, trying to see into the dark opening.  
“Oh—Brock.”  
A mother dog lay in the filthy dirt below the house. She was emaciated, her ribs showing through her thin baggy skin. Blood had dried around the outside of her nostrils and Vivienne knew she was dead. Four small forms huddled close to her cold body, only two were moving. They squirmed sluggishly and emitted heartbreaking cries. Brock had frozen as soon as he had pulled the screen back. Now, he reached inside the space and pulled one of the little puppies from the heavy darkness. He turned and looked at Vivienne; he held the little form cupped in his hands. “Hold it.”  
Vivienne reached out and took the puppy from him.  
“Hold it close to you so it stays warm. God knows how long they’ve been under here like this.”  
He took the other little one and brought it close to him. It mewled, being taken from its mother in such a way, but it quieted a little when it felt Brock’s warm body close to its own. Brock prodded the other little forms, but they were unresponsive. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. He stood up, the small puppy burrowed into his arm, and held out a hand to Vivienne. Vivienne took it and he helped her to her feet. Only then did Vivienne look down at the puppy in her own arms. Its fur was dirty and in some places, its mother’s blood had crusted over its skin, but the puppy was breathing still. Vivienne looked over at Brock and they shared a shocked, silent glance. Brock seemed a little lost again, but he was collected enough to re-adjust the puppy in his arms. He turned back and started to walk around the back of the house to where the rest of the team waited. Vivienne followed him.  
“I’ve got eyes on a vehicle moving toward the front of the house,” came Cooper’s voice in Vivienne’s earpiece.  
Vivienne touched Brock’s arm. “There’s a car approaching,” she said, knowing he hadn’t received the last report. “Possibly the last guy.”  
Brock kept walking to the rest of the men. When he reached the group, he handed Rollins the puppy. “Hold him,” he said.  
Rollins took the dog and, after getting no further explanation from Rumlow, he looked to Vivienne. Vivienne had nothing to tell him. Even she didn’t exactly know what was going through Brock’s head at the moment.  
Brock walked back towards the front of the house.  
“Car is parked in the driveway, looks like our last perp. He’s getting out of the drivers’ side. No other occupants in the vehicle.” Came Cooper’s voice. “Looks like he’s got himself a pizza.”  
Vivienne looked back at Rollins for some direction, but he was just as lost as she was. She saw Brock disappear around the corner. “Fuck,” she muttered. She pulled the puppy closer to her and started back around the house to follow Brock.  
The guy never saw Brock coming. He was pulling a box of pizza from the car when Brock pulled him out of the door by the back of his shirt.  
“What the fuck?” Shouted the man. “Who the hell--???”  
Brock pulled his fist back and hammered it hard into the perp’s face. He would have fallen for sure, but Brock had readjusted his grip firmly to the front of the man’s shirt. He reeled back again and landed another hard punch. The crack of broken bone split the man’s cries.  
“AAAUgh!!”  
“ARE THOSE YOUR DOGS??” Yelled Brock. “ARE THOSE DOGS YOURS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT??”  
He landed blow after blow to emphasize the syllables he stressed.  
Vivienne watched in shock. “Jesus,” she whispered. “BROCK!”  
The man had been knocked out by that point and Brock had surrendered his dead weight to the ground, but he didn’t stop beating the man’s face to a pulp.  
Vivienne went forward, but she didn’t know what there was for her to do.  
“Is—is he really beating the shit outta that guy?”  
Vivienne ignored Cooper’s voice in her earpiece.  
“YOU—DID—THIS—“ Brock said. His punches were digging into the man’s cheeks. The whiteness of bone glistened in the streetlight.  
“Brock—please,” said Vivienne. “Stop.”  
“Fine.” Brock pushed himself off of the man and drew his glock from its holster. He buried three rounds into the man’s chest.  
“Brock…”  
Brock tried to slip his gun back into its holster, but his hands were shaking.  
“Brock..” said Vivienne, seeing the blood that dripped from his trembling knuckles. “Hey…it’s ok…”  
Vivienne approached him slowly and touched his arm. She ran her fingers down until they reached his hand and she took the gun from him. “It’s ok…”  
Brock finally stepped back from the corpse. He looked at Vivienne and she could have sworn that she saw tears standing in his eyes, something she never thought she would see. The sight chilled her to her core for some reason. People like him didn’t cry.  
“We’re done here,” he said. “Tell STRIKE to pack up the T7Hydro and get back to the vans.”


	32. Hellbender Mini Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne leaves Brock to himself--he needs time to remember...

The lights in the SHIELD locker room seemed far too bright after remerging from the nighttime blackness outside. Now time was creeping slowly into the wee hours of the morning and Vivienne’s eyelids felt heavy. She stowed her holster inside her locker and walked across the room to secure her gear in the safe.   
Brock was sitting on a locker bench on the other side of the wall. Vivienne could see just his side, but she knew he had his head in his hands. He had been silent during the way back. Vivienne didn’t know what was wrong; maybe it was something she had done or maybe something she hadn’t. Maybe it didn’t have to do with her at all.   
Vivienne closed the safe and locked it. She walked slowly over to where Brock sat and she sat down beside him. He didn’t give any acknowledgement toward her being there, but she knew he was aware of it. Finally he pulled his hands down and stared intently at the wall across from them.  
“Those dogs better make it.”  
Vivienne was quiet, thinking of how to respond. They had brought the dogs back to the vet in DC as soon as they landed, but the vet couldn’t tell them that the puppies would pull through. He knew better than guaranteeing anything, and apparently for Brock’s sake, so did Vivienne. She wondered fleetingly what made him care so much.  
“I hope they do,” Vivienne answered. “They were in pretty bad shape. I wonder how long they had been there?”  
“Too long,” said Brock. “If I could go back and kill those people over and over I would. Did you see how they mistreated that dog? They fucking killed her. She had puppies and they killed her.”  
“Yeah I saw.”  
Brock rubbed his jaw, seemingly contemplating something. “I want those dogs.”  
Vivienne waited a minute, wondering if he was serious. Half the time she got the feeling that he didn’t even want her intruding on his very private life, let alone two newborn puppies.  
“Brock.” Vivienne looked at him flatly. “You can’t take care of those dogs. If they pull through, they’re gonna need a lot of attention and you don’t have time for that. Plus think of your place. They’d tear it up in a heartbeat, especially when they get older.”  
Brock snorted. “It’s none of your business to tell me what I can’t do, Vivienne.”  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow at Brock’s tone, suddenly feeling a little less sorry for him. “Yeah I know that. I’m just trying to help. Don’t be such a fucking asshole.”  
Brock closed his eyes. “Can you not right now, Vivienne? Please?”  
Vivienne was about to shoot back another snide remark, but it died before it could slip off of her tongue when she saw the look in Brock’s eyes. “Hey.”  
Brock shook his head. “Don’t… Really, Vi. I don’t wanna have a heart to heart right now.”  
“Okay.” Vivienne waited a moment, not really expecting anything more, before she got up and slung her bag over her shoulder. She looked back when she got to the doorframe, but Brock hadn’t really moved. She thought about saying something encouraging, but it would make Brock uncomfortable, so she didn’t. Instead, she walked out of the locker room and left him alone.

Once she got outside, she remembered that Brock had driven her. She didn’t know when he was going home or if he remembered that he was her ride and she didn’t want to put the pressure onto him to give her a ride back to her place or to take her back with him. He obviously needed time after that whole ordeal and she would give it to him.   
She started out over the long concrete bridge that connected the Triskelion to the rest of DC. The sound of the breeze over the water below was comforting, even though it was a bit chilly. She had been to tired to change all the way out of her clothes when they had gotten back to the Triskelion, so she had thrown a jacket over her vest before she left. She needed to clean the small bloodstain off of the STRIKE patch anyways, so she might as well do it herself at her place. She pulled her sleeves down over her palms and zipped up her coat.   
She wondered what might have set Brock off—she had never seen him allow himself to get so furious to the point it could have jeopardized the mission. He was too good for that. Whatever the trigger had been—it must have been powerful and she was almost scared to try to figure out what had fueled such an outburst.   
She got to the end of the bridge surprisingly fast, or maybe it just seemed like that since she had been so deep in thought. She hailed a taxi and took a last glimpse at the Triskelion before the car pulled away from the curb.

 

In another month and five days it would have been thirty years ago. Thirty long, long years that had shaped him into the person he was. He could still vividly remember the smell of the cigarette that had been pushed into the glass ashtray until it was no more than a crumpled stick of paper, the tobacco spilling out the split sides. He could remember the shape of the smoke that curled from the tray to the ceiling, adding just another miniscule shade to the textured plaster that was already greying.  
Most of all, above everything, he could remember his mother’s shrieks and her cries of pain.  
His father had been an addict—heroin had been his poison of choice. It was so much worse, though, when he washed back the high with a sixpack after work. He had been a police officer, but nobody had said a damn word to him since his father had been the Chief before he was gunned down by one of the local street gangs. The Chief’s death was a tragedy, but his son was too busy drooling at the ceiling in the midst of the summit of a high to remember how sad he might have felt.   
Brock still remembered walking into his parents’ bedroom after the funeral to find his father passed out. He had been close to choking on his own vomit in his sleep, but Brock’s mother had turned him and held him so that he wasn’t victim to his own sins. After everything, Brock wished that he could go back to that day—he wished he had never gotten his mother so that his father could have died then. Things would have been different.  
After the funeral, Brock’s father had gotten into the habit of using physical means to “correct” his mother. He beat the shit out of her and when Brock tried to stop him, he was sent to school the next day with a black eye to show for it.   
The Chicago Police force had decided that, in the wake of the tragedy, they should look the other direction. Marcello Rumlow was thus enabled to continue to beat his wife and son.   
One night, after Brock’s mother had spent the better part of the morning in the ER to be stitched up again and hadn’t found the time to put together her husband’s favorite birthday meal, Marcello came home and ripped the lamp, cord and all, from the wall to club his wife over the head with. Brock had been so frightened and stricken by the sudden and traumatizing death of his mother that he slipped past his father and ran the entire way to the police station.   
After the police took one look at his mother’s blood that was splattered over Brock’s clothes, he was packed into the back of police cruiser and he never saw his father again.   
He had heard that he was sentenced to a little over forty years in prison, but he had never believed that prison was what his father deserved. He deserved so much worse. 

The house that STRIKE had busted earlier had been six blocks over from where he had spent the earlier years of his childhood. He remembered the street names, the smell, the blood…the death…

Now, as Brock sat along in the locker room, he felt the loss all over again and the loneliness. It was overpowering. He had never considered that he could possibly be the same grief-stricken little boy who had run through the rain from a gruesome homicide, but now his chest still convulsed with the memory of his sprint and his eyes still welled with the tears that he had always tried so hard to forget. 

HYDRA had given him the opportunity to become a different person and to leave that life behind and for the twenty years that he had been a part of their operation, he had been able to do just that. Maybe it was all of that suppressed realization and emotion that had fueled his rise through the ranks in HYDRA. Maybe it was his chance to reshape himself and his future. He didn’t know.  
He didn’t want to think about it.

All he knew was that he had an obligation to save those dogs, who, like him, were salvaged from the blood of their mother.


	33. Hellbender Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A suspiciously encrypted computer, an accidental souvenir, no plastic knives when they are needed the most, and excuses that even Brock doesn't completely agree with.

Steve walked into the Gym. The lights were off and it seemed like nobody had been there at all that morning, which was strange, considering he was a couple minutes late due to the gate guards’ shift change. He walked slowly into center of the court. He didn’t remember any memos having been sent out about work hours that day.  
The doors opened at the other end of the gym and Bradshaw emerged from the locker room.   
Steve indicated the empty room. “Am I missing something?”  
“If you are, then I am, too.”  
Steve sighed. “Nice.”  
“Yeah,” said Bradshaw. “Real classy.”  
They stood around for a minute longer until Steve decided that it was relatively pointless. Rumlow was supposedly in charge of the STRIKE team, but he was nowhere to be seen, so why waste time waiting around for someone who most likely wasn’t going to show?  
“Ok,” he said. “They’ve obviously decided to give us the opportunity to dig a little further. Let’s—“  
“—Break into his computer?” Bradshaw finished for him. She made a beeline for Agent Rumlow’s office.  
Steve looked around. “That’s really not what I was going to say…”  
Bradshaw pilled a bobby pin out of her hair, letting auburn bangs fall down across her forehead. “But aren’t you curious?” she asked, twisting the pin and pushing it into the lock. She jiggled the handle and twisted the bobby pin again. The office door swung open.   
Steve watched her break into the STRKE leader’s office, unsure as to whether or not he should really be on board with the operation at hand. He looked around for cameras, but oddly enough there wasn’t a single one in the gym.  
Bradshaw invited herself inside and walked around the back of the desk. She wiggled the mouse and waited for the computer to warm up.  
“So you were right,” said Steve. “As hard to believe as it is, you were right about Rumlow and Donahue.”  
“What?” asked Bradshaw, trying to remember what she had said about them. “Oh! That they’re banging?” She read Steve’s look of disapproval. “Woww. Age gap, am I right? Not that you’re really one to talk.”  
“Hey,” said Steve, smiling a little. “I was in ice…”  
“Oh please,” said Bradshaw, pulling up the office chair and sitting in it. “Just because you were a human popsicle for half your life…”  
Steve took another look out at the gym through the office window, but it was still dark and quiet. He walked around the desk to look over Bradshaw’s shoulder.   
“It’s encrypted,” said Bradshaw. “Which is funny, considering that even though I don’t know everything about SHIELD, I do know that a whole other defense precaution is pretty unnecessary.”  
“Unless you’ve got something to hide from SHIELD,” said Steve. “Can you decrypt it?”  
Bradshaw sighed. “I could take a crack at it, but I don’t have my gear or the time. To take down a wall like this…it would probably take forty-eight hours at least.”  
“I guess that’s out for now,” said Steve. “Especially since we don’t know when the team will be back.”  
“I wonder where they are?”   
“Not sure,” said Steve. “But maybe Barton has a clue.”

 

Vivienne woke up warm and fully-rested. It was certainly a feeling that she wasn’t used to. The sunlight streamed through her curtains that she hadn’t bothered to close before crashing and it protested her desire to relish the restful moment. Vivienne stretched, groaning a little as she pulled the tension out of her muscles that were still sore from her cramped flight the night before. She knew she really wanted coffee, but she also didn’t want to get up to make it. Staring at the ceiling wasn’t too bad, either. She was comfortable in her own bed and she had the whole day…  
She wondered what Brock was doing. Sleeping, probably. Hopefully.   
Once again he had shown her pieces of himself that she hadn’t known existed. It had been an accident, of course, but it had strangely refreshing. Regardless of how he chose to express himself, at least he was honest. Honesty had been severely lacking over the past few weeks for sure.  
Vivienne reluctantly slipped her legs off of the side of the bed, letting the rest of her body lazily follow suit. She shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen, her legs and feet slowly beginning to work only after she touched the wall to recalibrate her balance. The kitchen was sunny and it still smelled like paint from the day she had applied a new coat. Probably because she was never home to use it.   
She opened the cabinet above the stove and pulled down the bag of coffee that stood alone inside of it. She had always planned a list of things to do in her free time while she was at work, but now that she had free time, everything on the list seemed like too much effort to try. She doubted that she would get much accomplished that day.  
She turned on her coffee maker and decided to get her laundry out of the way while she was waiting. She went back to her room and gathered the lumps of clothes from her floor, adding ‘laundry basket’ to the mental list of items that might be handy to have in a functional house. She brought everything to the washer, sorting through darks and lights and work clothes. As soon as she touched her vest, a jolt of panic went through her.   
She held the heavy Kevlar for a second, staring at the garment as though that might make what had been done magically undo itself. She swallowed, contemplating every possible outcome to what she only just realized she had done.   
Vivienne reached for the pocket inside of her vest and slowly pulled back the zipper. The small vial of T7Hydro rolled out onto her palm.   
Vivienne’s heart rate quickened. After everything that had happened the night before, she had entirely forgotten that she had picked that tube of Seventh Heaven up from the table. Even worse, the other boxes had already been packed up and were most likely as far out of human reach as possible.   
“Oh my God,” said Vivienne. She felt another wave of distress coarse through her when she thought about what SHIELD would do if they found out she had accidentally taken it. Of course it wouldn’t look like an accident. She tucked a few stray strands of hair back behind her ears and cautiously turned the little tube over in her palm, watching the iridescent contents shift inside the vial. She could tell Brock, but she didn’t want to put that on him. Somehow trying to figure out how to put back the drugs she had snatched—? That was all their relationship really needed right now. She could….dump the contents down the toilet…?  
She was only barely aware of her feet moving as she walked to the bathroom. The little tube caught the sunlight when Vivienne walked into her room and the contents lit into a brilliant display of prisms. Rainbows were cast over her walls and they morphed into and out of one another when Vivienne disturbed the tube. It was really quite gorgeous.   
She went to the bathroom and opened the lid of the toilet, unscrewing the cap of the T7Hydro. She began to tilt the tube, but then she stopped.   
All of the strangeness the night before—the unwillingness for the police to get involved…Rumlow’s neglect to alert Cap and Bradshaw about the mission…  
Something didn’t feel right and she knew that that feeling had a lot to do with the vial that was pinched between her fingers. She knew it was stupid, but she couldn’t bring herself to just dump the stuff—not until she found out what all of the unusual precautions were about.   
She began to screw the cap back on.   
Her phone rang.   
Vivienne hesitated, and then opened the medicine cabinet behind her mirror, placing the vial between her toothbrush and deodorant. She went across the room and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. “Hippie Shit.”  
She held the phone in her hand a minute longer before deciding to answer.   
“Hey,” she said.  
“Hey,” came Brock’s answer. “Were you sleeping?”  
“Not really. I was making coffee.”  
There was a pause. “Listen, Vi. I know there was a lot going on yesterday and I know there’s still a lot of stuff that we have to get through…”  
Vivienne sighed. “Let’s just…can we save that for a rainy day?”  
“I…Yeah.” Brock seemed surprised. “If you want.”  
“It’s too much effort,” said Vivienne. “Being pissed at you sucks—I’m not trying to spend my day off like that.”  
“I’m not going to contest you here,” said Brock. “Would it be too much to ask if I can just pick you up for dinner later?”   
Vivienne Looked across the room at the mirror in her bathroom. “Uhhh yeah. I mean no—sure. That sounds good.”  
There was a static-y sigh on Brock’s end. “Vivienne?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I’m—about last night…”  
“We don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want…”  
“Alright,” said Brock. He stopped, but Vivienne was waiting for him to say more. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”  
“Sounds perfect,” said Vivienne. 

 

Clint cautiously sipped his coffee, wincing when he remembered exactly how hot is was the few seconds ago that he had tried before. He unwrapped the bagel he had bought and pulled the foil top off of a small serving of strawberry cream cheese. He looked in the bag for a plastic knife, but the cashier apparently hadn’t given him one. He looked back over at the long, long line at the counter and at the empty utensils holders at the registers. So this was how his day would start.   
He pushed his paper bag toward the center of the table and tried to somehow invert the plastic container of cream cheese over his bagel.  
“You want a knife or something?”  
Clint looked up to see Steve squinting at his handiwork. “Yeah, that would be nice, but there aren’t any over there.”  
Steve sat down across from him, drawing the attention of the majority of their surrounding body of SHIELD agents. Captain America didn’t blend into a crowd too well.   
Clint looked around at their spectators, a little uneasy that suddenly their table was the center of attention. However, he turned back to Cap, pretending not to be perturbed by their surroundings. “Well. What can I do you for?”  
“I need to ask you a few things about STRIKE.”  
“What a surprise.” said Clint. “You didn’t just want to sit and have tea and crumpets? I’m shocked.”  
“Another time, maybe,” said Steve, getting right to the point as usual. “My partner and I are looking into Agent Tyler Brady right now. Did you know anything about him?”  
“Isn’t that the guy who died?” Asked Clint. “The guy who came before Agent Donahue?”  
Steve nodded. “We can’t seem to find any record of how he was killed…”  
“Huh.” Said Clint. “If you’re asking me whether I know anything about it or not, you’re asking the wrong guy. I had heard rumors about an accident in the field, but not much else.” He paused, reading Steve’s face. “Wait. Are you thinking that maybe it was covered up for some reason?”  
“I’m not sure,” said Steve. “But it looks that way. I don’t know why someone would go to such lengths to hide a cause of death unless it’s questionable…or purposeful.”  
“I know the guys on that team are serious dirt bags,” said Clint. “But do you really think they would—wait, are you saying—“ He lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “Are you saying they killed him?”  
“I’m not saying anything until I know something,” said Cap. “But if you had seen some of these things these men do…”  
Clint was all ears, now. “Like..?”  
“That’s…classified.”  
Clint raised his eyebrows. He could see the reflection of the events play across Steve’s face, so it wasn’t as if he couldn’t guess what STRIKE was up to, but it grounded things when they were spoken about directly. He knew he wasn’t going to get a word out of Steve if he didn’t feel like sharing, but he really wanted to know. Especially if…  
“What about Vivienne?”  
Steve looked at him. “What about her?”  
“Do you think she’s in danger?” asked Clint. “Like, should we warn her or something?” The more he thought about it, the more his brain conjured outlandishly awful scenarios that Vivienne could be caught up in. All of them ended badly.   
“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Steve. “She doesn’t seem to be in any danger right now.”  
Clint rubbed his hand over his chin. “You don’t know that…”  
Steve looked at him.   
“What.”  
“I’m fairly confident that Agent Donahue is fine, mostly because I have a pretty strong suspicion that she’s…that she might be playing some sort of part in this, too.”  
Clint squinted at him. “What are you saying? That…that she’s guilty of something? ”  
Steve grimaced. “Well, she’s making it pretty hard for me to prove that she’s completely innocent.”  
Clint had been fully engaged in the conversation up until that point. Now, he took a long breath and sat back in his chair. He looked out across the coffee shop, intentionally staring directly at the people who were still staring at them until they looked away.   
“I’m not saying that she isn’t,” said Steve lowly. “The more we know about this, the more we might be able to help her if she’s in trouble. The more we might be able to help a lot of people.”  
“So is she in trouble, or isn’t she, Cap?” Asked Clint, turning back to the conversation at hand. 

“I don’t know.”

 

  
“C’mon.”  
The dial menu for the Central D.C. Animal Hospital was ridiculously extensive. Brock exhaled impatiently through his nose, sitting on the arm of the couch as he pressed the according numbers to transfer his call to the right person.   
“Central Animal Hospital, would you mind holding?”  
“Actually—“  
“Thanks.”  
The hold music filtered choppily through his phone and Brock looked up at his ceiling in annoyance. He had always hated “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles.   
It was another five long minutes before the woman finally answered again.   
“Central Animal Hospital, how can I help you?”  
“I brought two dogs in really early this morning.” Said Brock, unaware that he was unintentionally holding his breath. “I wanna know how they’re doing…”  
“Your name?”  
“Rumlow,” he said. “Brock Rumlow.”  
“Oh, the two Doberman puppies.”  
“Yes.”  
“One of them is doing really well. We’re giving him his vaccinations today and he’s starting to eat. The other—the one with the lighter coat—he’s stable, but he’s refusing to eat, so we’re running some tests.”  
“So—so they’ll be ok.”  
“They should be fine. Are you interested in keeping them after they are released?”  
Brock didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”  
“Would you like for me to call you when they are available?”  
“Please. Yes, that would be great.”  
Brock’s phone beeped. Someone else was trying to call. “Can you just email me the bill and their information? I think I gave you my email.”  
“Sure. Is there anything else I can help you with?”  
“No,” said Brock. “Thank you.” He brought the phone away from his ear and swiped the answer icon just before it could stop pulsing. “Yeah?”  
“It’s Jack.”  
“Jack,” said Brock. “What is it?”  
“What happened last night?”  
Brock got up from the couch, accidentally putting pressure on his knuckles that were still raw. He clenched and unclenched his fist, gritting his teeth, and walked slowly over to the window. He looked out over the tops of the surrounding buildings. “It’s personal.”  
“I’m not talking about you beating the pulp outta that guy,” said Rollins. “I’m talking about Donahue.”  
“You wanna know why I didn’t kill her.”  
“Yeah.”  
Brock put his hand on the glass. “I had every intention to. I was interrupted by this whole Chicago ordeal.”  
“Well,” prodded Jack. “Are you going to try again?”  
There was a crow sitting on the edge of the building directly across from his window. Brock watched the bird as he cleaned his feathers. “I don’t think so.”  
These was silence from the other end. It seemed like Rollins had anticipated a different response. Even Brock was mildly surprised at himself. The crow ruffled his carefully groomed wings and looked across at Brock. Brock studied him.  
“I’m putting guys on her,” said Brock, deciding the course of action as he spoke. “And I’m bugging her apartment.”  
“Why—“  
“We need her,” said Brock, interrupting Rollins. “She’s a part of this team, albeit one that needs some supervision, but she’s just as essential as any of us. Losing her would throw us off kilter and we can’t afford that with Insight so close.”  
“But we also can’t risk blowing our cover here, either, Brock.”  
“That’s my fucking point,” said Brock firmly. “If she suddenly disappears, there will be questions and we already have Agent Rogers and that OBSIDIAN Liaison breathing down our necks.”  
“Ok,” said Rollins. He didn’t sound entirely convinced.  
“I would have killed her, Jack, but it’s just too late now. You need to understand that.”  
“Alright,” said Jack.   
“Are we done?”  
“Yeah,” said Jack. “I get it.”


	34. Hellbender Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Boot."

It was a pretty evening—warm too. Summer was on its way, making its approach rather evident through afternoons of temperatures climbing into the seventies and frequent thunderstorms that raged into late hours of the night. The sky was a soft pink with trails of frothy white clouds seeping into the sunset. The air was filled with the smell of the city and the cars below Vivienne’s apartment never ceased to circulate with their noisy drivers, but it was a good night. The first in a while.  
Vivienne combed the mascara brush through her eyelashes. She had been wearing the same makeup she had applied days ago until that morning and now, after she stepped out of the shower and began to groom herself for her dinner date that evening, she felt refreshed and clean. She toweled her hair a little more and pulled some mousse through the ends. She reached hesitantly for a tube of lipstick—of course she had never actually had the occasion to wear it until now.  
Her apartment buzzer went off. Vivienne looked in surprise at herself in the mirror. She was still in her towel for God’s sake.  
She rewrapped her towel a little more tightly and jogged down the hall to her front door. She leaned into the intercom button. “I thought you said seven!”  
There was a pause. Brock buzzed back, “It is seven.”  
Vivienne unlocked her phone. “Shit.”  
She pressed the button to unlock the door at the bottom of the stairs and tossed her phone onto the kitchen counter. She jogged back to her room, throwing open her closet in search of something to wear. She sifted through dresses that were bought and never worn, looking for whatever she was in the mood for—whatever that was.   
She heard her front door open.   
“I’m still getting dressed,” she called.   
Brock didn’t answer immediately. When he did finally respond, he was already walking down the hall. “I should buy you a watch.”  
Vivienne looked around the door of her closet at him. “I have a phone.”  
“You would think that you would notice the time since you always have that thing in your face,” said Brock, looking around her room.   
“Oh. Ouch. I’m so injured,” said Vivienne, rolling her eyes. “Punctuality isn’t exactly my strong point. I read somewhere that late people are like actually hidden geniuses or something.”  
Brock didn’t look impressed. “Your apartment is small.”  
Vivienne blinked at him. “I live here, so that’s not really new information, but thanks for the observation. I always accept donations.”  
“Actually…” said Brock. “I do have something for you.”  
Vivienne pulled a green dress out of her closet and closed the door. When she turned around, Brock had already left the room. She hadn’t actually been serious about the donations thing. She pulled her towel a little tighter and then sat down on the edge of her bed, waiting for him to get back before she got dressed. It would be a little awkward receiving whatever it was naked.  
Brock came back into the room momentarily, a shoebox in his hands. He sat down on the edge of her bed beside her.  
Vivienne looked at the box. “That’s really thoughtful of you, Tiger, but I think we both know I don’t wear a…” she read the box over his arm. “Size eleven cornwallis dress oxford. Wow. Sounds fancy, though.”  
Brock ignored her. “I wanted to get you this because of everything that happened in Russia.”  
“Russia?” Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “That was a while back.”  
“Yeah,” said Brock, “But if you think about it, that’s really when you earned your place in STRIKE. It’s when you saved my life, too, and no matter how many things come up or no matter how pissed off I am at you, I shouldn’t forget that. I’ve been pretty selfish recently…but… Anyways, since then, I’ve been meaning to get a replacement for what you lost…”  
Brock handed Vivienne the box.  
Vivienne looked at Brock, wondering if she needed to say anything first. She decided just opening it was all Brock was really asking for at the moment, so she did.   
A brand new glock, generation 5, was lying on a neatly folded scarf. It was really a work of art. Vivienne stared at it before looking breathlessly at Brock, who was waiting for her response.  
“Oh my God, Brock,” Vivienne breathed. “This scarf is beautiful!”  
Brock frowned. “Uh actually, that’s—“  
Vivienne pulled him in by his lapels before he could finish, kissing him before she grinned, laughing. “I’m kidding,” she said. “I love it. Thank you.”  
“Well I knew we lost yours,” said Brock, his cheeks getting a little rosy. He pulled at his lapels to straighten where she had grabbed so carelessly. “And I know you’ve primarily been using your rifle or your bowie, but you needed a handgun, so it was just for practicality’s sake.”  
“Sure,” said Vivienne, picking up the glock. She turned it over. The new matte finish sucked in the light from her room. “It has no serial number…” She looked at Brock. “Isn’t that illegal..?”  
“Normally it would be,” said Brock. “But in our case, we work above the police, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Just don’t go telling all of your friends.”  
Vivienne snorted. “Ok. If you say so.”

 

The restaurant was much fancier than anything Vivienne had ever been to. The lighting was low with candles at every table and the floor-to-ceiling windows were blue with the night by the time they got there. Vivienne looked up at the ceiling, which was painted with an abstracted mural of the city and its people. Vivienne immediately felt a little under-dressed. The dress she had picked out was more of a casual outfit—the other diners were wearing pearls and business attire.   
She and Brock were led to a table towards the back corner. The waiter picked up the “reserved” card that had been sitting on the tabletop.   
Vivienne patted the table to get Brock’s attention the moment the waiter walked away. “What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me we were going to be dining amongst Bond villains?”  
“I—we’re not—“ Brock looked around. “Just… Just open your menu.”  
Vivienne did as she was told. It was the least she could do after poking fun at him the whole car ride there. Brock had tried to get her to listen to a different opera artist on the way to dinner and Vivienne had been mercilessly teasing him. He had gotten mad and switched it off, but Vivienne had switched it back on at a red light. She searched for a particular song that she had managed to somehow find some attachment to and looked at him pointedly. Brock’s lips had twitched, but he hadn’t been about to give her the pleasure of a full smile.  
The menu was rather small, but everything on it was ridiculously fancy. The wine selection was astounding.  
The waiter came back and she and Brock ordered while being poured a generous glass of dry red wine.   
Vivienne watched Brock lift the glass and move it in a circular gesture, eying the contents and giving them a perceptive sniff before taking a sip. She noticed again his red knuckles. What a unique mix of a character he was—the kind of man who could beat a man to death with his bare hands and still be a picky asshole about the type of wine they served at an establishment such as the one in which they sat.   
“Mm,” said Brock, setting down his glass. “Good enough, I guess, but I have an older bottle at my house.”  
“Jesus,” said Vivienne, shaking her head. “You’re too much.”  
Brock pulled at the neck of his creamy white dress shirt. “Vivienne….” He said, pausing once he had her attention. It seemed like he was trying to piece together how to say the things he needed to. “I…need to explain some things to you.”  
Vivienne took a sip of her wine. Here it came—the ‘heart-to-heart’ that Brock hadn’t wanted the day before. She set down her glass and raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay…”  
“Part of me really doesn’t want for me to tell you any of this…”  
Vivienne breathed.  
“But I need to explain myself…especially after what happened in Chicago.”  
“The guy with the pizza…”  
Brock wiped a hand over his mouth and looked around them. Nobody was seated within earshot, and she knew he knew, but he looked around anyways. It chilled Vivienne a little—surely he was about to tell her that he was really an ex-convict, or that he was prone to a mental illness that might explain the spontaneous violence. Either way, she watched his lips breathlessly, waiting for him to say something.   
“What happened…?” she asked, giving him a verbal prod.  
“You know, Vivienne…” Started Brock. “We really know nothing about eachother. I’m not saying that to offend you, but I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed the same.”  
“I feel like that was part of the deal.”  
“I felt like that, too,” said Brock. “Admittedly, I’ve gotten closer to you than I have to most others before. You know things about me that most don’t.”  
“Ok,” said Vivienne. “What. Do you want me to tell you about my favorite music and my celebrity crush in high school? Like, I’m not really getting where this is going.”  
Brock squeezed his eyes shut. “Just shut up for a second. I’m trying to be open with you about this…”  
Vivienne stopped her persistent pushing. Now seemed not to be the best time.   
“I’ve told you before I’m from Chicago,” said Brock. “I actually grew up a few blocks down from that house we raided. The block wasn’t as shabby as it is now, but it was still a low-rent district.” He was gazing at the deep red of his wine. “My dad was a drug addict and frequently abused alcohol. He and my mom fought all the time. When my grandfather died, he fell off the deep end and my mom really took the brunt of it, since he let her know just how upset he was about it.” He paused and looked up at Vivienne. “And then one night he killed her. The lamp in the corner or the room would spare him bloody knuckles, so he used that to beat my mom to death.”  
Vivienne stared at him her mouth slightly agape. She didn’t know how to respond. It was sure as hell a terrible way to start dinner conversation, but that wasn’t even the point. The story was horrific and Brock had just told it to her over wine—it explained a lot about him and about the way he was and it helped her understand why he had snapped the night before. Hell, it helped her to understand why he could sit there and tell her all of these things so calmly while any other person might have needed a box of tissues and a shrink to get through even analyzing the first few words that had come from his lips.  
Vivienne’s eyebrows knitted together finally. Brock had been watching her, waiting for her to acknowledge that she had understood what he had said. She knew that every second more was probably making him feel awful for having told her. “Oh my God, Brock.” She said. “My God, I’m so sorry.”  
“Don’t be sorry, Vivienne. You weren’t even born yet. I’m not asking for sympathy for something that happened decades ago.”  
There was a pause.  
“Why did you tell me?” Asked Vivienne slowly. “I know you wanted to explain what happened in Chicago and I get it, but why?”  
“I don’t really know,” said Brock. He looked around at the other patrons again.  
Vivienne blinked and took another long sip from her wine glass. She had been caught off guard by the story—by the truth, really. He never told her anything about himself until now. It was a compromising story and somehow, the fact that he had even bothered to tell it to her and risk some new perception of him made Vivienne look at him with new eyes. It was like breaking a window—broken, but God, the sweet smell of fresh air and the unblurred view beyond seemed better in the moment.   
She could tell that Brock was just as thrown off as she was. She wondered if he had ever planned on telling her all of that. She wondered if there might have been a better way to react to all of that, but she couldn’t think of anything she might have done instead.   
“I used to scrape all of the filling out of oreos when I was little,” said Vivienne, staring at her drink. “I’d eat the frosting last after eating the rest of the cookie. I also first kissed a boy when I was in first grade. It was at recess on the tire swing and he gave me a plastic ring you can win out of one of those quarter machines.” She looked at Brock with a small smile. “I also shaved half my hair off on a dare in high school, but the clippers were much shorter than I thought they were, so it looked awful. But that’s when I started wearing my hair short.”  
“It looks good short, Vi.”  
“Flattery,” said Vivienne, her smile widening. “So tell me; if you’re Italian, do you know how to say anything in Italian?”  
Brock snorted. “Very, very little.”  
“Like what?”  
“Avio.”  
Vivienne squinted at him. “Alright. What does that mean?”  
“Boot.”

 

Brock got quietly up from the bed and made his way to the bathroom. The wooden floor was cold under his feet as he walked.  
Just as he had hoped, the evening had gone well and Vivienne had ended up coming back to his apartment with him. The sex had been phenomenal as it always was and they had turned out the lights about an hour ago. As soon as Vivienne’s breaths slipped into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep, he pushed off the covers.  
He turned on the bathroom light, shutting the door noiselessly so that she didn’t get up. So far, everything was falling into place.   
He had hated telling Vivienne that story. It was personal, and he would have rather not shared it, but she had needed something from him—something real. He needed her trust and that was the quickest way to get it. It gave her an explanation and it gave her some idea that she knew who he was. For the next few months, he needed her to trust him.   
He had been banking on her not being quite ready at seven—she was never really punctual. The extra time had given him the opportunity to put a bug in her phone that had been sitting on the counter and another one on top of the refrigerator. She had been none the wiser to what he had done.   
Now he just needed to keep an eye on her until Insight. He wondered how that would play out.  
He didn’t think he could admit that he cared about her as deeply as he knew he did, but it was the idea that he cared so deeply at all that kept him from trying to kill her a third time. What he had told Jack—about Rogers’ suspicions and Vivienne’s importance to the team’s smooth functioning—it was really a load of bull and the dangerous thing was that Jack knew it, too. Hiding HYDRA secrets from Vivienne had been hard enough, but to train her to the level of obedience that she exhibited on the field had been much harder. Maybe all of that time and effort that Brock had put into her was what kept him from burying a bullet in her skull. Or maybe it was something else entirely.  
He disliked the idea of luring her closer to his real self—who he really was behind the SHIELD emblem—in order to gain her full trust, but it was the only way to spare her life in all of this. Some loyal part of him believed that he at least owed her that much. She had been doing HYDRA’s bidding just like the rest of STRIKE, but he knew that if he ever told her that, she wouldn’t see their progress like he did. He wished she could, though. Everything would be so SO much easier. The idea of keeping her was very tempting, but he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of thinking that way.   
He gazed at his reflection in the mirror, fully aware that everything that he had now—this—her—it was all fleeting.


	35. Hellbender Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confusion, miscommunication, and a lack of the right words to say. Cooper gets a little rowdy, Clint gets a really great offer, Brock decides to try to be cool about Cap for a change, and Vivienne thinks that Bradshaw is just worried about fitting in.

“So now what? We spy on her?”  
“I guess.”  
Cooper shook his head and paced back and forth in front of the locker room doors. Jack stood a little behind him, his arms folded and his expression stony with suppressed irritation.   
Right about now was when a Marlboro Red would come in handy. Cooper pushed his fingers into his pocket, but he already knew what he would find. He pulled out the box of toothpicks and shook them at Jack. “Really?”  
“You’re going to die of lung cancer.”  
“Fuck you,” said Cooper. He popped open the box and pushed a toothpick between his lips. It definitely wasn’t the same. “My lungs are pink, you prick.”  
“You don’t know that until they order your autopsy,” said Jack. “It’s doubtful they’re as healthy as you say they are.”  
Cooper looked up at the ceiling of the gym. “Anyways,” he said, ignoring Jack. “I don’t really care about the outcome of all this, so I’m not gonna let myself be bothered by it too bad. I didn’t sign on to change the world.”  
“The cause is worth it,” said Jack lowly. “Even if you don’t believe in everything the baron is pushing here, you know it’s better than putting up with SHIELD’s sad excuse for world protection.”  
“At this point, Jackie, I’m really just in it for the money.”  
Jack sighed. Cooper was always hard to convince. “Well then at least the pay is better. You’re always talking about buying another ranch in Texas. If you push through Insight, you should be able to retire after with a hefty enough sum for that.”  
Cooper turned on his heel, facing Jack directly. Jack looked coolly back at him as Cooper twisted the toothpick between his teeth.  
“How much would a washed-out old cowboy like me have to pay a guy like you to come to Texas with me? Leave all this—“He motioned to the surrounding gym, “—behind?”  
Jack started to smile a little—certainly a rarity. He pushed himself off of the wall on which he leaned and took a few steps towards Cooper. “I would do it, Tex. If you see Insight through with me, I’ll retire after this last operation, too.”  
Cooper smiled at him, blowing a lock of hair away from his face and tucking it behind his ear. He started pacing again after a minute, accepting everything as it was, giving into the flow as he did so often. “You talk big game, Jack, but we both know you better. You’re in it to win it.”  
“I can quit—“  
The doors across the gym opened and they turned around to see Rogers come through. He held the door open for Bradshaw, who started across the floor toward them.   
Cooper was grateful for the change of subject. He nodded at them and looked back at Jack. “Fifty bucks says he’s banging her.”  
Jack snorted. “Fifty says he’s a virgin.”

Steve let the gym doors close behind him as he followed Bradshaw toward the locker room. He noticed Agent Cooper and Rollins watching their approach. Cooper was patting Rollins affectionately on the chest, a throaty laugh causing him to tilt his head back with humor. It seemed like Rollins must have said something uproariously funny.   
He didn’t know Rollins actually talked to anyone, let alone Cooper, who seemed like he would have been a little too obnoxious for his taste in friends. It didn’t help that every time he saw him, Cooper had some new Southern phrase to frequently use in conversation to try to trip Steve up. It was either that or he found a name that seemed more preferable to “Agent Rogers”. The last favorite had been “Yellow-belly Yankee”. A mouthful, but Cooper had taken it upon himself to call him that upon every occasion.   
“What’s the haps, Cap’n?” Greeted Cooper.   
“Agent Cooper, Agent Rollins—” greeted Bradshaw before Steve could speak. She walked right up to Cooper and smiled up at him. It was blatantly transparent. The Texan didn’t seem perturbed. “It seems like we get the pleasure of working with all of the lovely STRIKE team today, doesn’t it, Cap?”  
Cooper raised his eyebrows. “Did y’all miss me that much?”  
Steve didn’t buy into the agent’s act. “Where was STRIKE yesterday?” he demanded. He had really meant to warm up to the interrogation a little and the brunt of his irritation had really been meant for Rumlow, but it seemed like the STRIKE commanding officer hadn’t arrived yet. “Apparently there was some miscommunication and Agent Bradshaw and I were left in the dark as to your whereabouts.”  
Cooper was too interested in grinning back at Bradshaw to care about whether or not Steve had his full attention. “You’re ‘bout as friendly as a damn bramble bush, you know that, girlie?”  
Bradshaw didn’t miss a beat. “Kiss my ass, you country hick.”  
Cooper howled and looked back at Rollins with a clap. “Oh my livin’ Christ. She’s got a tongue on her.”  
“Where were you?!?”  
“Home,” said Rollins, speaking up finally. “As you should have been. Didn’t you get the memo?”  
“Actually I didn’t,” said Steve, aware that his tone was becoming just as hostile as Rollins’ had been. “It seems like I was accidentally deselected from the mass notification. Agent Bradshaw, too. Where is Rumlow?”  
Cooper sighed. “Wash off your war paint, there, Captain. I’m sure Rumlow’ll be around for you to poke him left and right with all of your questions. Just give him a minute to breathe.”  
Steve locked eyes with Cooper. “Maybe I would feel more inclined to “let him breathe” if Agent Bradshaw and I hadn’t wasted our time showing up to an empty gym yesterday.”  
“Was that embarrassing?” asked Cooper.  
Bradshaw gritted her teeth. “You seem to know exactly which of my buttons to push to piss me off,” she said.   
Cooper raised an eyebrow in amusement. “I wasn’t talking to you, but if you really wanna talk about me pushing your buttons, can we also discuss you givin’ this ol’ boy’s lever a shine?”  
Bradshaw’s nostrils flared and her muscles tensed. In Steve’s head it all played out—Bradshaw would have punched Cooper for sure, and it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it, but Steve put a hand on her shoulder.  
“They aren’t worth it.”  
“Fuck you,” said Bradshaw to Cooper.   
“OK. Gimme a time. I’ll be there.”  
“Stop,” said Rollins.   
Steve wondered if the agent had stepped forward out of some form of politeness and respect, which wasn’t likely, or because maybe he, too, noticed that Cooper’s smirk and tone had lost the joking quality that they had held before.   
“Let’s all remove the sticks from our assholes and get ready for PT,” Rollins continued, looking directly at Cooper.   
Steve was having a hard time cooling down, but he knew that he really needed a level head to go into the conversation that he was planning with Rumlow. As much as he hated to heed Rollins’ suggestion, he let the breath he held go and lowered his voice to Bradshaw. “Maybe you should wait for Agent Donahue to get here before you mix it up with those two in the locker room…”  
Bradshaw snorted. “Yeah? You think I need her protection from her disgusting friends?” She shrugged his hand off of her shoulder. “Thanks for the great idea, Steve.”  
“Easy,” said Steve, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not saying that you need protection from anything. I just don’t trust them.”  
Bradshaw eyed him and then sighed, shaking her head. “I hate doing this. I know I’m not going to be here forever trying to nail them to their own filth, but I liked my job back at OBSIDIAN so much better…”   
“I bet.”  
“I just got mad for a second,” said Bradshaw. “Sorry I snapped at you.”  
“It’s alright, Bradshaw. You held up better than most.”  
“Cassidy.”  
Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “Cassidy.”

 

Clint sat in the back of a SHIELD quinjet, close to falling asleep, but with too much caffeine in his system to allow him to make it all the way to REM. He and the rest of field team Charlie had just completed a mission in California and they were on their way back to DC. He looked across to his companions, some of them asleep after a full night of recon. Agent Hill was standing at the other end of the jet by the cockpit, talking lowly into her mic. She met his gaze and talked a little longer, nodding once with a final confirmation before she touched the earpiece to sign off. She walked over to him and Clint nodded at her.   
“Hill,” he greeted.  
“Barton.” Agent Hill grabbed the overhead pole beside his seat and sighed. “Your performance on the field, as usual, was excellent. I’m pretty happy to have you on Charlie. I know I tell you that a lot.”  
Clint smiled up at her. “Thanks.”  
“Have you given any more thought to what Commander Callahan proposed?”  
He hadn’t really. The guy had offered him a better job in Los Angeles; better pay, better opportunity for job progression than what he had in DC. It was still SHIELD, but it was no secret that the Los Angeles SHIELD organization thrived where the DC department was currently stumbling. He probably should have given it thought, but he hadn’t. “No. Not really. It’s a lot to digest.”  
“I get that,” said Hill. “But seriously, Clint. You’ve got insane talent and a real knack for the business. I think you should really consider it.”  
“What?” Said Clint with a laugh. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”  
“No.” Hill sat down in the seat beside his. “I would have to find another rookie idiot to take your place. Maybe someone with less wrinkles to iron than you had… still have…”  
“You’d miss me.”  
Hill shrugged. “It’s SHIELD. Everybody sees everybody at some point or another. I doubt it would be the last time you’d see my pretty face, so you don’t have to be so depressed about it.”  
Clint fidgeted with his phone a little. “I’ll look into it. Is that better?”  
Hill patted his shoulder and got up again. “A little.”  
In truth, Clint didn’t really know if he wanted to leave DC. It was hot and the traffic pissed him off and he did get bored with a lot of the routine stuff he did for Charlie, but at the same time, he couldn’t let go of the nostalgia of making it by himself in his comfortingly crappy apartment and the great people he had managed to meet and become friends with. As of right now, his relationship with DC outweighed the glamour and promise of success that LA offered to him. It shouldn’t have, but it did.  
His phone vibrated and he swiped the face to check his new message. It was Cap.   
“You find anything out?”  
After being swept into Charlie’s mission last night, Clint hadn’t really been focused on helping Steve over the last ten hours. He knew he was supposed to have been prodding Vivienne about Agent Brady and he had honestly been grateful for the distraction of a mission; He just really didn’t want to push it with her—not now.  
He let his head fall back in an attempt to help relieve the stress, but it didn’t help. The cold hard belly of the quinjet was anything but comforting.   
After thinking about everything following his meeting with Steve the other day, Clint still wasn’t entirely convinced that Vivienne was wrapped up in all of the dirty dealings of whatever it was with STRIKE that Steve had accused her of. He didn’t even know how he might go about initiating a conversation with her regarding Steve’s suspicions.   
He brought his phone up in front of him, texting back “working on it” before letting his hands drop to his lap. Was it too much to ask for a day off from the stress?  
If Vivienne was in trouble or if she suspected something going on while she was in STRIKE, she would have told him, right?  
He scrolled through his contacts list, touching Vivienne’s name. He saw his message bubble that he had sent to her. “You ok?”.  
He had been about to spill all of his guts at the bar—he didn’t know whether he was grateful or disappointed that Vivienne had left early. He had already been saying too much, but he still really just wanted for her to hear it, regardless of whether or not she was actually listening to him. He had a lot to say.  
He opened a new message and tapped his keyboard. “Hey Vi”. No punctuation, leaving the realm of possibilities for interpretation. He sent it. He stared at the message for a bit before he closed his phone.   
After everything that she had said at the bar about him and them…  
He really just needed to be completely honest with her. She deserved that much.

 

Vivienne pulled the mascara brush through her eyelashes again before popping it back in the tube and twisting it shut. She flipped up the mirror on the back of the visor and passed Brock her ID when they approached the gate. Her phone vibrated on her lap and while he was busy showing their IDs to the gate guard, Vivienne opened her phone. It was a text from Clint. “Hey Vi.”  
Vivienne looked at her screen, waiting for more, but nothing came. It was apparent that he expected her to respond.   
“Here,” said Brock, handing Vivienne back her ID card. Vivienne closed her screen and took her card back, but it wasn’t before Brock caught her contemplating the text.   
“Secret admirer?” He asked.   
“Yeah,” she said. “A sugar daddy. Older and wealthier than you.”  
Brock tapped his fingers across his steering wheel as they entered the parking deck. “Was that Barton?”  
Vivienne looked across at him, but Brock waited until they were parked before he gave her the pleasure of looking back over at her.  
“What?” He asked, as if it was no big deal.   
“You’re such a snoop. And not the cool kind.”  
“He asking you to dinner again?”  
Vivienne blinked at him, wondering if he was actually jealous, or just trying to play the part. Usually he was so detached and technically, it was an unspoken rule that he shouldn’t care. “No.”  
Brock looked at her for a minute, dissecting her, before unbuckling his seatbelt. Vivienne snorted, holding back a humorless chuckle. “What? Are you jealous?”  
“No. I’ve got no need to be. He’s your friend.”  
“Exactly,” said Vivienne, unbuckling her own seat belt. “No need to get salty.”  
Brock snorted, opening the door. “I’m not… ‘salty’.”

They passed through security once they were inside the Triskelion and then made their way back toward the gymnasiums. Vivienne thought about how best to text Clint back on their way to the double doors.   
As they walked inside, Vivienne looked over to see Rogers standing expectantly outside Rumlow’s office with Bradshaw. They both turned around and locked eyes on her and Brock. Vivienne could sense Brock’s irritation level rise beside her as it usually did when in company of Captain America and his little crony. She had to restrain herself from playfully sidekicking him in the ass. Now was not really the best time and he never enjoyed it when she did that.   
“Good luck,” she said under her breath.  
She left him to tend to whatever ailed the Captain now as she walked toward the locker room. Out of her peripherals, she could sense Bradshaw making a beeline for the locker room when she pulled the door open. Fantastic.  
She passed by Rollins and Cooper and Henley. Cooper snapped at her with his t-shirt to get her attention.  
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?” She didn’t want to give Cooper the pleasure of looking at his very maintained chest muscles, or she might not hear the end of it.   
“Rumlow’s got some shit on his plate,” said Cooper, nodding toward the locker room door. “And that lil poodle the Cap’s got on a choke chain—“  
He stopped when the locker room door opened and Bradshaw walked past. Vivienne looked around at her, but Bradshaw didn’t seem interested in stopping to talk, which was fine by her. She looked back at Cooper. “Yes?”  
“Later.”  
“Alright.” Vivienne walked to the back of the locker room where she saw Bradshaw twisting the combination into her lock. She didn’t ever know what to say to the OBSIDIAN agent, especially after the very few but particularly icy exchanges they had had in the past. She decided not to say anything.   
Vivienne found her locker and entered her combination.   
“Hey, I have a question.”  
Vivienne popped open her lock and looked around at Bradshaw, who was shrugging into her PT shirt. The agent had prodded so casually and without the biting coldness that usually lingered in her tone. It aroused Vivienne’s suspicion and while Bradshaw pulled her gym shorts out of her locker, she watched her for some sign of insincerity—anything.  
When Bradshaw noticed that she had Vivienne’s attention, she continued. “Not to be nosy or anything, but how did you get onto the STRIKE team? Fresh out of the academy…no actual missions under her belt…”  
Vivienne was a little take aback. “I didn’t ask to be put on this team.”  
“Somebody liked you.”  
Vivienne’s eyebrows knitted together in irritation. “Yeah. Fury, I guess.”  
“So why did Fury put you on the team?” asked Bradshaw. She lowered her voice. “Did it have something to do with Agent Brady’s death?”  
Vivienne pulled off her shirt, taking the millisecond during which the fabric was over her face to recollect the first day she walked into Brock’s office. He had said something about Agent Brady, but she hadn’t really thought much of it. She grabbed her PT shirt from where she had set it on the bench between them and started to pull it on, looking at Bradshaw squarely. “If you want to know why Fury hired me and literally created a spot on the team for so I could be there, then why don’t you ask him yourself? He never told me a fucking thing about why I’m here, but you should know that I earned it. I earned my place here. I’m not some fucking snowflake…”  
Bradshaw pulled on her PT shorts. “I never said you were.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes and pulled her own shorts out of her locker. “Uhuh.”  
Bradshaw started to pull her hair back into a ponytail, opening her mouth as if she had more to say, but then she stopped short, seemingly thinking better of it.  
Vivienne turned back to face her as Bradshaw pulled her hair through the elastic with a flash of auburn.   
“It takes STRIKE a really long time to like people,” she said. “It took them a long time to like me and sometimes I still wonder if a couple of them would be happier if maybe I got gunned down in the field while we were on a mission, but they’ll decide whether they want anything to do with you or not. You can’t just expect everyone to warm up to you and you can’t be pissed when they don’t.”  
Bradshaw raised an eyebrow. “Well I’m not concerned with whether or not they like me. I’m here to do a job, not pray to God that these psychopaths decide to make me part of their psychopath family.”  
Vivienne shook her head. “What you put into it is pretty much what you get out of it. If you’re gonna be a bitch to them, they’re gonna be dicks to you. It’s just common sense. You’re not going to get anywhere on the team if you don’t suck it up and sit back in your goddamn seat.”  
“Is that what you did?”  
Vivienne shut her locker. “I did what I had to do.”

 

“We did what we had to do,” Brock said. He gazed coolly at Agent Rogers over his desk. “I understand that that answer seems unsatisfactory to you, but it’s the only one I’ve got. It was last minute and I only took my core members so that the strike would be a quick in and out without any complications.”  
He had unlocked his office and let Rogers inside a few minutes prior. He really hadn’t felt like waging another war, especially with Insight so close, and had opted, instead, for a calm explanation, something he was usually entirely against. Now he sat behind his desk and Rogers stood across from him. Of course Rogers had had questions and he was upset that neither he nor Bradshaw had been notified of the mission two nights ago, but seriously, the guy needed to understand that it all came down to Rumlow’s call. STRIKE belonged to him and Steve couldn’t argue with that. So far, Brock had done his best job making that obvious without coming out and actually saying it while they sat and discussed Steve’s concerns.   
“Yes. I get it. It’s your call,” recited Steve from what he had gathered.   
Brock was smug on the inside, but he maintained his neutral composure. It almost felt better this way—calmly feeding Steve all the bullshit he could safely shovel.  
“Are we getting briefed on it?”  
Brock had written the mission report the day before. It told a tale of repossessing SHIELD tech that had somehow been smuggled into the Chicago ghetto. He had memorized it, so he wasn’t worried.   
“If you and Bradshaw feel the need to be filled in, I can have a conference with you, but it was standard repo work.”  
“I thought you said it was an emergency.”  
“It was.”  
Brock looked hard at Steve. “Would you like the mission report?”  
The tendons in Steve’s neck tightened as he pressed his molars together. “That would be helpful.”


	36. Hellbender Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You knew it was coming. I'm sorry.

Vivienne leaned her forehead against the passenger side window of the SUV. The glass was cool and it helped her relax. She just wanted some time alone—she hadn’t had that in a while. While she and Brock walked out of work together, she told him that she was going to take a night off. She wanted Netflix and wine and they just didn’t have the same taste in movies. She wanted a shower in her own bathroom that she had barely used since she had repainted it all that time ago and she wanted to sleep between her own sheets and not have to share leg space. Brock had told her that she could have just said that she wanted the night off instead of elaborating.   
Now, she sat in the passenger seat as he drove her back to her apartment.  
“You’re going to get my window all greasy.”  
Vivienne looked over her shoulder at him. “Calm your tits. I’ll buy you windex.”  
Brock shook his head. “How about just don’t do it.”  
“Do what?” asked Vivienne, pressing her whole side of her face against the glass dramatically. “This?”  
“You’re walking next time.”  
Vivienne smirked and settled back into her seat. Downtown DC was bright even in the night as they floated amongst a sea of red taillights. She checked her phone. She had texted Clint on and off throughout the coarse of the day while she hadn’t been trying to best Cooper on the range—it was an impossibility, but she had joined Rollins in trying to at least match him. The bet was over two hundred dollars by now.   
The conversation had been relatively casual, which just made her all the more wary when her phone vibrated in case he decided to pick up where they had left off that night. That night when they met in the bar she had been in a different place in her mind…somewhere she knew it would be risky to return. She didn’t think she could morally allow herself to return, even if she wanted to.  
He hadn’t texted back yet, so she went back to watching the passing cars and buildings out her window.   
“I called the vet before we left,” said Brock.  
“Yeah? How are the doggies?”  
“They’re doing well, actually,” said Brock. “I can pick them up tomorrow.”  
Vivienne studied him as he navigated through the thick traffic. “You ready for that?”  
“They’re dogs, Vivienne, not kids.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Tch. Yeah, I know that. You just have a lot of nice things in your house, that’s all. You might want to think about putting some stuff away before you bring them home.”  
“I can handle it,” said Brock.   
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “What am I thinking? You were able to speak six languages fluently by the age of ten. At the budding age of eleven, you—“  
“Shut up,” said Brock. “I told you, I was drunk when I told you all that shit and I wasn’t ten.”  
“Oh excuse me,” said Vivienne. “Sorry for the confusion, oh master jedi.”

Brock watched Vivienne walk to her apartment door and fish around in her purse for keys. When she found them, she turned around and blew him a ridiculously dramatic kiss. Brock pretended that he hadn’t saw her do that and pulled away from the curb, pushing his Bluetooth into his ear and switching it on.   
For someone so seasoned in STRIKE tactical training and so impressive on the field sometimes that she took his breath away, she could really embarrass the shit out of him.   
He pulled away from her weathered brick apartment building and slid again into the traffic as he headed back to his flat. 

Vivienne opened the downstairs door to the building and made her way over to the elevator. She had a bag with her PT clothes in one hand and she was trying to balance her phone, her physical mission report binder, and her boots, which she had decided to bring home to try to wash some of the grime out of. She pushed the button and then noticed the sign on the doors. In sloppy handwriting, someone had written “out of order”. It wasn’t surprising. Since she had moved in, the elevator had always been a little iffy with the occasional shuddering jolt and the strange metal-scraping-against-metal sounds that it made.   
Vivienne started on the stairs, making her way slowly up toward her apartment on the fifth floor. The last pinkish-orange glow from the sun that had only just slipped below the horizon lit the painted cinder block walls with color. The place still smelled the same and the same pile of trash that was in the trashcan in the corner of the third floor was still there from the last time she had walked up the stairs—maybe several weeks ago? It was gross, but those things gave Vivienne comfort.   
As she walked up the stairs, to the fifth floor, she noticed a hooded figure sitting on the top step. He looked up when she started up the last flight.  
“Clint?”  
Clint pushed off his hood and stowed his phone, walking down the few stairs between them so that he could take her boots and her binder out of her hands for her. “Hey, Vi. Sorry to just show up like this.”  
Vivienne shrugged. She had been looking forward to her night in, but she didn’t mind his company, either. “It’s ok. No worries.” Seeing him in person again made her heart rate quicken a little. “What made you battle this awful traffic to come see me?”  
“Well I didn’t intend to, like, creep on you or anything,” said Clint, waiting while she pushed her keys into the door. “I saw your car parked in the lot, so I thought you were already here. I was going to ask if you wanted to go get a bite with me, but that was earlier.”  
Vivienne pushed the door open and walked into her flat, kicking the door the rest of the way open for Clint and setting her things on the counter. “Well I’m always down for company. I think I actually have a frozen pizza or something in my fridge.”  
“I can call that Chinese takeout place you like—“  
“You don’t have to spend money on me, Clint. Seriously. SHIELD doesn’t pay us enough money to throw it at takeout.”  
“Well, it wouldn’t be throwing it so much as handing it.”  
“Oh, shove it up your ass. I’m trying to be practical here, Barton.”  
“Sure, Vi.”  
“Why don’t you see if that new season of Brainz is on Netflix?” said Vivienne, shutting the door and bringing her bag of dirty clothes over to the washing machine.  
Clint walked a little further into her apartment, rubbing the back of his neck.  
“There’s a new season?”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “You know, the one where the dude has a daughter that’s immune and she looks kinda like a female Joseph Gordon Levitt?”  
There was a pause from the living room.   
“That was last season, Vivienne. Are you seriously that behind?”  
Vivienne dumped her stuff into the washing machine and balled up the plastic bag in her hand. “I dunno…I guess? I feel like the season before that just came out…”  
Clint scoffed at her. “Get with the times, Donahue.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “I’ve been busy.”  
She walked back into her room while Clint sat in the living room trying to navigate to Netflix on her TV. She set her boots down beside her doorframe and found her charger, plugging it into the bottom of her phone. Her bed was still unmade from whenever she had slept in it last, and though it bothered her, she didn’t really feel like straightening any of the sheets at the moment. She opened her closet and pulled out a pair of pajama bottoms and a halter top, which she brought to the bathroom. As soon as she had shut herself inside, she looked at herself in the mirror.   
Her hair was sticking up a little on one side where it had dried after taking a shower at the Triskelion and her lack of makeup afterward made her face look pasty. She smudged a little coverup under her eyes and fixed her eyebrows a little so that she looked little more awake than she felt.   
She didn’t know why Clint was at her apartment. She didn’t mind him being there, but it put her on edge not really knowing what to suspect. She missed the days when things were a little less complicated and they could just chill without the pressure of that thing that wasn’t ever supposed to have happened in the gym. She didn’t think she regretted it—sometimes she caught herself imagining it happening again—but she couldn’t do that to Brock. Especially not since he had opened up to her. That showed progress and she wasn’t about to shut him down before she could even learn to understand him. Her heart lurched a little because she knew she had seen a blush flare across Clint’s cheeks when he had spotted her. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.  
Vivienne opened her medicine cabinet for her toothbrush and stopped mid-action. The bottle of seventh heaven was still sitting there where she had left it; glistening enchantingly, the enticing little rainbow glimmer running up and down the glass tube when she reached out to touch it. She picked it up and let it roll into her palm. It was light for liquid, but she knew exactly how dangerous its existence in her medicine cabinet was. She didn’t know what to do with it. Part of her really just wanted to pour it down the toilet. The other part of her begged to keep it—she had to admit, it was exhilarating having something so wanted in her possession.   
“Hey, Vi! Are you coming or what?”  
She set the tube back into the medicine cabinet, neglecting to brush her teeth like she had set out to do before, and shut the mirrored door, getting hurriedly into her pajamas. 

Brock had just gotten home. Halfway back, he had thought about turning around. Clint had apparently shown up. It surprised him how angry he had gotten when he had heard that voice through his bluetooth, how his fingers had tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Clint had a way of butting in between him and Vivienne—maybe it was unintentional because maybe he didn’t know about their arrangement, but it still pissed Brock off and drove him to his boiling point when he thought about it. He knew when Vivienne was lying about seeing him. Most of the time, he could see right through her. Other times, he could tell because she came back to his bed with a distant look in her eyes and a quick tongue for an argument. He wondered if she felt something for him.  
As he pulled into his parking space, he decided that it didn’t matter. From what he had gathered from their conversation that filtered into his Bluetooth from the hidden bugs, she hadn’t been expecting him. At least she hadn’t lied when she had said she was planning on having a night by herself. Whatever. It didn’t matter.  
He listened the whole way over, but they had put on Netflix and he wasn’t about to sit in his car all night listening to whatever amateur TV show they were watching. She would be ok. He would know if anything happened. He hesitated a minute longer before he reached up to his earpiece and switched it off. 

When Vivienne came back to the living room, Clint was sitting on the edge of the couch and he was tapping his foot in that way that he did sometimes when he was anxious. Vivienne had looked down at his bouncing sock.  
“You ok?” She asked.  
“Oh,” said Clint, flashing a smile at her and reaching for the remote to unpause the TV. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine.”  
Vivienne waited a moment longer, hoping he would just spill what was on his mind. He made a point not to look back at her, so she went to the fridge to pull out a couple of beers. She brought them back into the living room with her and collapsed onto the couch, handing him one. He smiled at her and clinked his bottle to hers before taking a half-swig. The episode resumed, but Vivienne felt more like watching him, trying to figure out why he was acting so strangely. The first episode passed without any sort of an attempt made at an exchange between them, so Vivienne relaxed a little back into the pillows for the next. The night was getting later and the pink sky had dimmed into blackness. Vivienne looked out into the night occasionally, wondering what Brock was doing now that he had a night to himself.

 

Clint got up to answer the door when the bell rang and Vivienne looked over from where she sat on the couch to see the Chinese takeout driver handing over steaming boxes of food to him. Vivienne paused the TV show and waited for Clint to make his way back to the couch. He handed her a paper box of hot food.   
“Hibachi style,” he announced, presenting it to her with a set of chopsticks. Vivienne took them.   
“Thanks for dinner, Clint.”  
“Yeah,” said Clint, sitting back down on the couch. “No problem.”  
They started to eat in silence for a minute. Vivienne forgot that she could un-pause the episode. She lifted the remote.  
Clint waved her down before she could press play. “Hold on, hold on—“  
Vivienne looked over at him. “What? You can’t eat and watch at the same time?”  
“No,” said Clint, swallowing his bite. “No, it’s just—it would be nice to just take a minute and talk. You’re always so ‘go, go, go’.”  
Vivienne made a face at him. Here it came…whatever had been on his mind for the past couple hours. “OK…”  
“Hey. Relax.”  
Vivienne watched him. She had been so hungry before and now she didn’t know if she could eat. Something in her chest tightened. She had a feeling that they weren’t about to discuss how corny the special effects were in the current episode. For the time being, it it seemed like those conversations were being put on the backburner.   
She was sure that Clint could somehow hear her thoughts.  
“What do you want to talk about?”  
“I think you know.”  
“…assuming I don’t…”  
“You can tell me to leave. I’ll leave. I won’t keep bothering you about this.”  
Vivienne could feel her heart begin to hammer in her chest. The thumping was jarring and even sickening, but it wasn’t totally unwelcome. He was referring to their conversation in the bar. “You want an actual answer to all of this.”  
“No,” said Clint. “Seriously. No. I don’t expect that from you.”  
“OK…” Vivienne set her takeout onto the coffee table. “Then what?”  
“I need to know that you’ll be ok.”  
“What do you mean?”  
There was a pause.  
“Are you…worried about me?”  
Clint’s cheeks immediately flushed.   
Vivienne had lowered her tone, allowed her defenses to fall a little.  
“I…well, I mean, I know you can handle yourself, Vi—“ said Clint, putting down his takeout box and looking at the paused screen.   
Vivienne watched his throat when he swallowed whatever words might have been trying to creep out of those lips.   
“I can.” Said Vivienne.  
“I know.”  
Vivienne waited. Waited until he finally looked back at her. She wanted to read it in his eyes again, just to make sure it was actually there. When his gaze met hers, she clenched her teeth a little and had to look away. It was stupid and unfair.  
“Why did you come here tonight, Clint?” She asked him.   
“I had to talk to you.”  
“Ok,” said Vivienne, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Alright, so you came over to what? Talk at me about how Brock doesn’t deserve me? Pretend you have any idea about what’s going on with me recently? Like, I think you don’t really know who I am sometimes, Clint. I think sometimes you conjure this girl in your head that looks like me and talks like me, but she sure as hell isn’t me because I’m too fucking stupid to make the perfect-ass decisions your imaginary me might make.”  
“No, no no—“ said Clint. “I’m not trying to make you mad, Vivienne.”  
“You are!”  
“Vi! I’m not—“  
“This is my life, Clint!” said Vivienne. “I know you wish that I could make better decisions for myself and I do, too, but sometimes I’m just caught up in the middle of everything and things happen.”  
“’Things happening’ shouldn’t include putting everything into a relationship with a guy who will never—“  
“Clint, shut up!”  
“Vivienne—listen. I just desperately want you to see that you’re too close to realize that the guy’s abusing you!”  
“He’s not!” Vivienne said, raising her voice. She got up from the couch. “I’m not too damn close, Clint, you’re too far away!”  
“Vivienne!” Clint got up, too. “What I’m saying is that there shouldn’t have to be a distance from which you’ve gotta look at it!” Clint’s voice rose. “The things you said at the bar—“  
“I wasn’t thinking, Clint!”  
“Vivienne--!”  
“STOP TRYING TO TELL ME—“  
“Vivienne—I love you—“  
Vivienne’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyebrows pushed together and though everything in her head told her to say something, she couldn’t. She blinked and a tear rolled down over her cheek.   
“Wha…why…?”  
Clint looked broken. “What do you mean?” he asked, a humorless chuckle hanging onto his words.   
Vivienne felt like she was going to fall down to her knees, but maybe it was just the ground that seemed to be unsteady. She closed her eyes and felt her body shudder as a sob escaped her lips.   
“Vivienne—“  
“Please don’t say anything,” she choked.   
Clint reached out and touched her shoulder. “Vi—“  
Vivienne brushed his fingers off of her, shaking her head and backing away. She couldn’t get a breath in past the rawness in her throat.  
Clint stood there a moment longer and Vivienne could feel the air split between them.  
“I…” Clint smoothed a hand back over his hair and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye in the same movement, not wanting it to show. “I got a job in California.”  
Vivienne couldn’t speak.  
“I’m leaving.”  
He still stood there.   
“I just really needed to tell you,” he said.   
Then he was gone.   
His takeout box still sat on the coffee table.  
Vivienne finally looked up at the door when he left, razor-hot tears sliding from her eyes. 

She had lost him.


	37. Hellbender chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some sweet fuzz--literally. Everyone needs a little pet therapy

It was so cold and dark and the water lapped around her chin and mouth as if it wished that badly to fill her lungs, send her sinking down into the bottomless abyss below her. She took a breath and inhaled all water. Every one of her senses immediately seized and her body convulsed. She felt a hand grab her by the ankle as she drowned, pulling her down, down, down.  
The shock that surged through her muscles startled Vivienne enough to wake her and immediately she rolled over onto her back, her sweat causing her hair to stick to the side of her face. She inhaled and felt the rawness in her throat that had been there whenever she had eventually fallen asleep. Her cheeks were tight where tears had dampened them and her eyes hurt when she opened them even against the very low shine of the streetlights outside. When she remembered everything, new tears blurred in her eyes, but she blinked them away, not wanting to have to accept that they were there at all.   
None of it ever should have happened. She should have said something else, but shat else was she supposed to have said?  
She summoned enough energy to flip over her phone that lay on her bedside table and she read the time on its face. A little over an hour before her alarm should go off. She knew she couldn’t go back to sleep. She gazed at the ceiling, looking at the watermark that she was always so drawn to. It seemed most noticeable when she had something weighing heavily on her heart.   
She could hear the heartbreak play over and over in his words. “What do you mean…?”  
She suppressed the ragged breath that swelled in her chest. She shouldn’t feel it. She didn’t need that right now.   
She clenched her teeth, but she couldn’t keep another tear from falling. So she got up, went to her bathroom, and turned on the shower faucet.

 

Steve nudged the kickstand out from his motorcycle and leaned it to the side, looking over at where Bradshaw was waiting for him by her car. It had been a routine that they had gotten into before the Austria mission, before things had gotten somewhat sour between them for a little while—and now it looked like she was trying to bring it back again. A peace offering, maybe?   
Bradshaw came over with two cups of coffee in her hands. When she was close enough, she nodded at the cup that she extended toward him. “Black, like you like it.”  
Steve took it, watching her face as he did. “Thanks.”  
“No problem.”  
Bradshaw took a long draw from her cup and pretended to check her phone. Steve looked away and smiled a little, dismounting his motorcycle.   
The morning was still on its way, the sun just barely beginning to rise past the Triskelion. They were some of the only two on that side of the parking lot and for once, DC was quiet. The noiseless moment was something Steve wished that he could stretch for a longer amount of time, but he also knew that the day was just starting and hopefully, he would hear something back from Barton. Having something to use against Rumlow and STRIKE would make that morning all the more satisfying and it would definitely continue to help loosen tensions between himself and Bradshaw.   
He took a sip of his coffee. It was burning hot and the aroma of it alone sharpened his focus.   
He nodded toward the Triskelion. “Shall we?”  
Bradshaw groaned jokingly. “Ugh. If we must.”

The gym was dark, still, with only its reserve lights funneling tiny beams of greenish light down to the floor. Obviously Rumlow hadn’t arrived yet and Steve was pretty sure that he and Bradshaw were actually the first two to get there that morning. He took another long, slow sip of his coffee and looked back at Bradshaw.   
“Hopefully this is not another ‘miscommunication’.”  
Bradshaw chuckled. “I think we’re just early.”  
They both looked around when the doors opened behind them.   
Agent Donahue walked into the gym. She was alone—a rarity—and she didn’t bother to look up and greet them. Steve watched her as she walked past, unsure as to whether or not he should try to say something to her. The second passed and she was already too far away from them that a greeting would still be acceptable. She pushed through the locker room doors and then Steve and Bradshaw were alone again.   
“Did you see that?” asked Bradshaw.  
“See what?”  
Bradshaw rolled her eyes. “You’re oblivious. Her eyes were all red like she had been crying.”  
“Well she didn’t look at me. How was I supposed to know?”  
“C’mon, Cap!”  
“Ok,” said Steve. “What do you think it was that upset her? Should we do something?”  
“I dunno,” said Bradshaw. “Maybe she and Rumlow split and she’ll spill her guts about STRIKE now.”  
“Hm,” said Steve. He knew that Clint had intended to talk to Donahue the day before. Maybe he had pushed her too far. Maybe he had made him push her too far. He couldn’t help feeling like somehow everything was all tied together and that he wasn’t entirely blameless for Donahue’s distress.   
“You good there, Cap?”  
Steve looked back at Bradshaw. “Yeah.”  
“You looked a little caught up in it.”  
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Maybe I was.”

 

Brock switched on the lights to the gym and pulled his keys from out of his bag, walking over to his office while also trying to shoot a quick update email to Pierce. He was planning on briefing Cap and Bradshaw that day, so the big boss probably needed to be in the loop to what he was about to tell them. They couldn’t have conflicting stories if Fury came to Pierce about it.  
He sent the email and pushed the key to his office in the lock.   
“Did you do it?”  
Brock looked around to see Rollins standing behind him. He hadn’t even heard him walk up.   
“Do what?” He pushed open the door and went into his office, setting his things down on his desk.   
“Sever things with Donahue.”  
Rumlow squinted at him. “I feel like I told you the thing between me and her is none of your business, Jack.”  
Rollins raised his eyebrows. “You did.” He hesitated and then started to walk back out of the office.  
“Wait,” said Rumlow, suddenly somewhat interested after Rollins’ response. “Why did you ask?”  
Rollins shrugged. “She looks like shit.”

 

Vivienne pulled her sim vest out of her locker and loosened the straps, pulling the garment over her head. She had little interest in the attention she seemed to be getting and she knew that the low exchange between Cooper and Rollins on the other side of the lockers was most likely about her, otherwise Cooper wouldn’t have kept so quiet. Bradshaw was even keeping to herself—a detail that irritated Vivienne even though she knew that she would most likely snap if the agent tried to talk to her. She was a muddled mix of emotions, but on top of it all, she was just frustrated with everything. Things always seemed to work against her. As she had told Clint, she “got caught up in the middle of things” and it really never seemed to end.   
Vivienne tightened the straps again to the form-fitting white vest and tapped the test strip to make sure that it was charged. The cluster of vein-like light in the middle of her chest glowed red. She closed her locker and slipped into her shoes, grabbing her helmet from the bench on her way out.   
Rumlow didn’t really seem to notice her puffy eyes and if he did, he didn’t show it. He had donned his white vest, so bright against his tanned skin and dark hair. Vivienne looked at him, but she was having a hard time actually seeing him.   
The morning started in the sim room, dragging, dragging, but it felt like it really was no different from any other. The lack of differentiation felt wrong to Vivienne. The world should have taken a break so she could catch her breath.

After two long sim sessions, Rumlow finally called for a break and Vivienne left the sim room, pulling her phone out of her pocket for a distraction. She checked the empty screen. Of course there would be nothing from him. She hated herself for expecting any more. She looked out the window across the hall from her. DC was completely ignorant of what had happened to her the night before. The sun was shining , bright glittering fragments bouncing over the water between the Triskelion and the rest of the city. The sky was cloudless.  
She knew she had crushed him. She was hurt, too. Maybe she had really felt something after all...? It wasn’t the right way to feel at the moment, though, and he should have been respectful of that, shouldn’t he? Vivienne fell into a daydream watching the water.  
“Vivienne.”  
Vivienne startled and looked around to see Rumlow standing behind her. He looked down at her warily and Vivienne knew her feelings were probably written all over her face. She tried to swallow them, maintain a more professional composure. It was really hard.   
“What happened?”  
Vivienne shrugged, wiping at her nose. “Doesn’t matter.”  
Rumlow’s eyes cut into her—she was being burned alive by that hot hazel stare. “Who was it?”  
Vivienne had to look away from him. “Nobody.”  
“Was it Barton?”  
Vivienne shook her head, but she knew the way she pressed her lips together to keep from crying in front of him gave her away all the same. It didn’t matter anymore, so she gave in to the tired tears that stood in her eyes.  
“What did he do to you?” Rumlow asked, his tone more abrasive than he probably thought it was. “Where is he? Vivienne.”  
“It’s nothing, Brock,” said Vivienne. “He’s leaving is all. He’s not—he’s not… coming back.”  
Brock tried to put the very vague pieces together, neglecting to make an attempt to comfort her. “Oh.”  
There was a long pause before Vivienne stepped hesitantly forward and pressed her forehead into his chest. She didn’t really care that they were at work or that he probably wouldn’t comfort her back. She just really needed some part of him at the moment to hold on to. She breathed in his familiar smell and pressed her hand to the light cluster on the front of his vest. There was a minute’s pause before she felt the weight of his hand press to her back.

 

Steve looked over at them from where he stood with Bradshaw.   
“Looks like we haven’t been as lucky as I thought,” said Bradshaw. “Which sucks.”  
Steve heard her, but he wasn’t really thinking about the setback. Instead, he wondered what had happened. He hadn’t heard back from Clint at all, so he assumed all of this had stemmed from his meeting with Vivienne the day before. He hadn’t meant to drive Donahue to tears, but he also knew that is that was what it took to get the right information from her, he wouldn’t necessarily hold back. He had thought that it all might have gone smoother coming from Clint, but apparently not. The worst part was, if it had been fruitful at all, Clint probably would have told him by now.   
As if on queue, his phone buzzed. Steve took it out of his pocket and checked the new message. It was Clint.  
“Sorry. I can’t help you with this one, Cap. Transferring to LA. My plane leaves tomorrow at eight.”  
Steve’s brow furrowed when he read the text. “Jeez.” He looked back up at Donahue and Rumlow, but he couldn't bring himself to feel any negativity toward Vivienne at the moment. He wondered if the lack of bias was somehow rooted in the past of his own actions.

 

The rest of the day followed suit with the first half. They finished up in the sim early and Rumlow called time when he had received a phone call from the vet. Vivienne watched him talk on the phone from where she stood waiting for him across the gym. He had asked her if he had wanted to go with him the day before and she had known that it was important to him, so she had said yes. Now she waited, her back against the wall. Brock hadn’t prodded her any further about what had happened, and, in fact, it seemed like he had chosen to forget all about it. He had gone on with the rest of the afternoon as if nothing had happened at all, so Vivienne had tried to do the same. It wasn’t worth crying over anymore. There was nothing she could do about it now, as much as she still wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry until her ribs broke.   
When Brock finally ended the call, he gathered his things from his office and turned off the lights, locking the door, before he walked over toward her.   
“The boys are ready to be picked up.”  
“Boys, huh?” said Vivienne, clearing her throat until she reached a more peppy tone. “That’s gonna be a fuckin’ handful. Did you get some stuff together for them?”  
They turned and walked out of the gym together. “I picked up some supplies from the pet store yesterday. Got them some high-dollar food.”  
Vivienne looked across at him. “I still can’t see you with dogs.”  
They left the Triskelion after scanning out with their ID badges. Vivienne couldn’t help but look over at the café as she had always done on her way out—scanning for that face. Of course it wasn’t there. He was gone now.

The ride to the animal hospital was quiet and sunny. The buildings of downtown DC loomed over the SUV when they sank into the city traffic and they slowed with the rush of people around them, shadows gliding darkly over the hood in front of the windshield as they unintentionally played tag with the shade of passing trees.   
“What are you gonna name them?” Asked Vivienne. “You know, since you kinda strike me as the type to name their pet ‘dog 1’ or ‘dog A’.”  
Brock looked at her flatly as they stopped at a red light. “Relentless.”  
Vivienne pointed at herself. “Me? No. Never.”  
There was a pause. “I suppose I’ll wait and see.”

The pet hospital was busy as it usually was in the late afternoon in DC. People were getting off of work and taking their animals in for routine check ups and others were dropping off strays. Vivienne waited while Brock stepped forward and talked to the woman sitting behind the front desk.   
She caught the eye of a panting golden retriever sitting beside a man reading a magazine. The dog seemed to be smiling at her, but that was just the way dogs were, she knew. She wondered how Lucky was doing. It felt like it had been a while since she had seen him.   
“Vivienne-“  
Vivienne snapped out of her daydream to see Brock nodding toward the doors on the other side of the room. She followed him as he held the door open for her into the hallway beyond. They trailed behind the veterinary assistant as she led them to a small windowless room. The walls had charts all over them, some of them showing the makeup of a dog’s internal systems and others showing various breeds of dogs.   
“We’ll bring them in to you and coach you a little on how to care for them these first few weeks.”  
Vivienne poked Brock on the shoulder when the door closed and they were left alone. “Excited?”  
“How about Cassius?”  
“What?”  
Brock sighed. “For one of the names.”  
“So regal,” said Vivienne. “How do you know he’s gonna be regal? What if he’s just a scruffy asshole like you?”  
“Ha. No.” said Brock, smoothing his fingers back through his hair. “I’m not ‘scruffy’. I actually had time to shave this morning since you weren’t there.”  
“Oh ouch,” said Vivienne. “I think you just like to blame being lazy on me sometimes.”  
“I’m never lazy.”  
“Uhuh. I know.”  
“So what would you think of going back to Russia?”  
Vivienne snorted. “Random?”  
“Not really,” said Brock. “STRIKE has business in Russia next week. I’m telling the guys about it tomorrow.”  
Vivienne studied the dog ear, nose, and throat chart that hung across from them. “Well,” she said. “We had so much fun the last time…”  
She thought about the nightmarish precession of events that had taken place last time. Hell, the little blue bandana the old Russian woman had given her last time still sat on her dresser. She thought about waking up in the snow every time she rolled over in her bed to see it sitting past her alarm clock.  
“You sound enthused,” said Brock sarcastically.  
Vivienne decided that he had spent too much time around her. He was never so sarcastic when they met. Mostly he had just been a dick.  
Vivienne shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I have a choice.”  
“You’re right about that. Grin and bear it, kid.”  
The door opened and the veterinary assistant with the vet behind her walked in carrying two tiny little balls of fur in their arms. Vivienne and Brock stood and Vivienne immediately felt her heart melt.  
She gasped. “Oh Brock. Look.”  
The vet held a small bottle for the one she was holding. She smiled up at them when she closed the door behind her.  
“So I get to meet the people that saved these sweet little dobermans’ lives. You found them while you were visiting family…?”  
Vivienne waited, but Brock didn’t miss a beat.  
“Yeah. They were underneath an old house just down the street.” His eyes were glued to the tiny little body in her arms. “He looks bigger.”  
“Well,” said the vet. “He’s healthier for sure. This one finally decided to eat. Here.”  
She indicated for Brock to take him and he reached out to her without hesitation. She handed him the pup and then she handed him the tiny doll-like bottle. “They’ll both need to be bottle-fed for a while. We’ll give you papers outlining the specifics. But it’ll be dedicated work.”  
The vet helped Brock arrange him so that he was holding the pup by the chest and Brock sat back down in the chairs behind them, hesitantly offering the bottle to the dog. The assistant offered the other pup to Vivienne. She looked back at Brock with an empathetically dramatized frown and gingerly took the baby. He was warm and so soft and he didn’t really look much like one of the pathetic balls of matted fur and blood that they had cradled on the way back to DC. The sweetness of his tiny little eyes that half-opened tore her heart a little and he squirmed to get closer to her.   
“Oh. My. God, Brock.”  
“So they’re pure bred Dobermans,” said the vet, watching the interactions with the puppies with an adoring smile on her face. “Someone had a lot of money and no desire to care for a dog. We’ve got them mostly up to date on the vaccinations that we can do. You’ll have to bring them back in a little bit for us to do the others that they just didn’t need to be bothered with right now.”  
Vivienne sat back slowly into the chair beside Brock. “Brock,” she said. “Can he be a little Niko? He looks like one.”  
Brock looked over at him and Vivienne lifted him a little closer to her face, rubbing the insanely soft spot under his chin and doing her best to plead wordlessly with the new fur-daddy sitting beside her.   
She thought she saw Brock smile a little. Vivienne would have ruled him completely heartless if he hadn’t in the presence of such unbearable heartthrob.   
“Niko, huh?”  
“It’s a cute name,” said the Vet. “That’s the beginning of a very loving family.”  
Brock’s cheeks reddened. It took a lot to embarrass him. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Vivienne nuzzled the sweet little ears. “Niko.”


	38. Hellbender Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to Russia to pick up some precious cargo.

“So…At this point I’m pretty sure you’re just doing this to piss them off.”  
Cooper watched the exchange between Rumlow and Agent Donahue. It was always interesting watching Rumlow smoothly formulate reasonable explanations to her—covering for their actual intentions and very much lying through his teeth every which way, but hey—he really had a knack for it, Cooper had to admit.  
“No,” said Rumlow, looking up from his mission plan and across the table to meet her gaze. “They don’t fit into the picture, Donahue. Simple as that. It might seem like I’m kicking them out, but I really do have to limit the extra bodies we have over there to keep us on the low. We don’t need to draw any more attention than we already will.”  
Vivienne sat back, allowing herself to be satisfied with his answer, though she still seemed a little skeptical. Had he been in her place, he would have been calling bullshit, but it wasn’t him that Rumlow had seemed to cast a spell over.  
But seriously. Back to Russia…?   
He had known it was coming. Insight was drawing closer—something all these HYDRA-to-the-core boys were obsessing over. He supposed it would have probably been important to him, too, had he been HYDRA from the beginning like they had, but he wasn’t and he had a hard time getting on the bandwagon with the hype. Rollins wished he did. And because Rollins wished he did, he tried to absorb some of that energy and anticipation for the coming rise of HYDRA so that maybe he, too, might understand the drive.   
What he did understand was the coming of the end of all of this mess. After these years chasing purpose with HYDRA, he had finally found something to strive for.   
But anyways, he had known that they would have to go back. Rollins had explained who had ambushed them the last time—some arch nemesis organization of HYDRA. They were wreaking havoc upon HYDRA operations in Russia at the moment and the ‘asset’ needed to be moved to their more secured base. Apparently this guy was a pretty big deal, the ‘asset’, especially since he would be involved in the execution of Insight. He knew all of this from what Rollins had told him, but he was still pretty in-the-dark about a lot of HYDRA’s reasoning.   
The mission was pretty much guard duty—it seemed below them, but with the prevalence of Leviathan forces in the area, the big dogs there had decided that they needed a step up protection-wise.   
Move the asset from point A to point B.  
“Questions?”  
There was silence around the table.   
“Good,” said Rumlow. “Take a break.”  
Cooper instinctively patted his pockets. He felt the disappointing rattle of the toothpick box in place of his Reds.   
He looked up to see Jack watching him. The swarthy agent smiled when he saw the affect of the toothpick box that he had made Cooper carry.   
Cooper looked up at the ceiling in frustration and then pushed away from the table. Jack followed him out as they waited for the rest of the team to funnel out of the room.   
“Don’t be pissed.”  
Cooper stuck a toothpick between his lips and shook his head, avoiding direct eye contact with Jack so that he wasn’t tempted to wipe that smug smile from his lips. “Pissed? No. No, no, no. That’s not me.”  
“Besides,” said Jack. “All of this reminds me that you owe me one anyways for hauling your heavy ass outta that dump in Russia last time, remember?”  
“Oh, bite me, Jack.”  
“What. What’s your problem?”  
Cooper waved his hand as if to shoo Jack away starting a conversation in that direction. “Nothing.”  
“Fine.”  
Cooper found his lighter and turned it over and over in his palm. The plastic was so worn at this point that one could barely make out the feminine design that had originally graced its body. “I just want this to be over now, Jack. I wanna leave DC. I’d rather stick my foot in a boot with a burrowed rattler than be here for insight. It seems that by the way things’ve been shaping up, its gonna pack a helluva punch that I just don’t wanna take.”  
“Not too much longer,” said Jack lowly. They were the only ones who had stuck around in the hallway, but he was still being cautious.  
Cooper hated the caution. Caution about everything—so many secrets and hiding and the goddamn dishonesty.   
“Better be.”  
“I don’t want to have to do this any longer than we need to either, Tex.”  
Cooper snorted. “That’s a lie and you know it. You can’t get enough of this.”  
“No—“  
“Yeah. It’s all in your eyes and that stupid grin while we’re face-down in the dirt getting shot at.”  
Jack must have thought about answering, but he couldn’t come up with a good response to the accusation.  
“Don’t worry,” said Cooper after a minute of contemplation. “I’m not gonna hold that against ya. We can still be friends.”  
“Fiends, huh?”  
The look on Jack’s face was enough to keep Cooper from being able ignore him anymore. He pushed a thumb into the soft spot beneath Jack’s lower lip.  
“I suppose,” said Cooper with a smirk.

 

It seemed to Vivienne that every trip they made overseas seemed much shorter than the travel time should be. It was made that way most likely by a great buildup of anticipation, but also anxiety. She hated to admit that she thought obsessively at times about everything that could go wrong. At that particular moment, as they were zigzagging through a patch of particularly formidable turbulence, she thought of everything that had gone wrong last time. The experience had been so surreal.   
The memories that seeped back through her made her shoulder throb. The bullet wound had definitely scarred—it probably wouldn’t have been so bad had she actually had access to legit medical treatment. Vodka and makeshift gauze only went so far.   
She pried her eyes from the window—it wasn’t like looking out of it with all of her willpower might magically transport them there safely. It was out of her hands and she knew it.  
She reached into her thigh pocket and touched the scarf she had tucked there. Her souvenir from last time.   
“What’ve you got?”  
Vivienne looked up at Brock, who had somehow managed to stand that close to her without her knowing.   
“None of your beeswax.”  
Brock wiped his nose nonchalantly. “Uhuh.”  
“It’s that bandana.”  
Brock didn’t look like he knew what she was talking about. Rather than prod her further, he just squinted and nodded a little. Vivienne hated it when he did that. It made her feel like he wasn’t really listening to her.  
“I told you about that old Russian lady whose car I hijacked last time we were in Russia, right?”  
“Uh no.”  
“And I dressed my own gunshot wound?”  
Brock was silent.  
“And then I went back out and climbed the fucking mountain?”  
Brock shifted on his feet and glanced away. His brow was furrowed, giving Vivienne some comfort now that he knew that he actually was listening to her.  
“I don’t really remember having asked you about how you actually found us last time.”  
Vivienne wondered if he was actually really that upset with himself that he hadn’t inquired about her adventure.   
“Well we didn’t really have time to talk about it,” she said. “We were sliding off a cliff and then…” she remembered, all of the sudden, the first face she had seen after blacking out. The way he had told her that everything was going to be ok. He had pressed a palm to her forehead. She wondered it he had been in love with her then, too. “…I woke up in the quinjet. Field team Charlie, remember?”  
“I remember that part,” said Brock, but it seemed like he hadn’t made the connection that she had. There was a pause. “You good, Vi?”  
“What?” Vivienne snapped back into the present. “Uh—yeah. Yeah, sorry.”  
“So you took this lady’s car—“  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. She started to drift back into thought, but caught herself, looking back into Brock’s eyes and willing herself not to look away again. “It was so cold…”

 

Vivienne stepped down from the ramp of the quinjet, feeling dizzy for a moment when her feet touched solid ground, namely the inside of a yawning hangar that had been carved out of the back of a grey rocky mountain. She had been preparing herself for that whipping wind, but she had forgotten that the last time they had made the trip, it had been during Russia’s late winter.   
Now it was toward the latter end of the summer. The air was full of the smell of trees and mountain vegetation when she pulled it into her lungs. She held the breath for a moment, stretching, and then let it go, looking around her. The hangar was bare of any other aircraft, but there was a lineup of parked black SUVs against the far wall. The space seemed dated, but she didn’t know what necessarily gave it that feel. Maybe the old-time-y lights that hung heavily from the natural rock ceiling that stretched into eerie blackness overhead.   
“We’re not here for a field trip, Donahue. Move your ass.”  
Vivienne looked around to see Rollins stepping down off of the ramp behind her. He was carrying a large heavy pack of survival equipment. She jumped out of his way.   
“Sorry.”  
“Get your stuff and load it into those SUVs over there.”  
“Alright,” said Vivienne. “Chill.”  
She jogged back into the quinjet and found her pack sitting by her seat. She lugged it onto her back with a grunt and followed Rollins back toward the vehicles that sat in wait for them like predators. 

 

“Is it supposed to be dead in here like this?” Cooper looked out of the back of the jet and watched Agent Donahue hurry to catch up with Rollins’ brisk beeline.  
Brock followed his gaze. “It’s better this way,” he said. “No contact, apart from the two agents and the asset. We’re trying to keep this under wraps for as long as possible and we don’t know how Leviathan was able to breach our defenses at Grey Ledge. They could have tech we don’t know about.”  
“Great. Hail HYDRA, am I right?”  
Brock looked across at Cooper with a look that silenced him. The guy was a bit much sometimes.  
“Get your stuff packed,” he said. “There’s no leniency in the schedule.”  
Cooper complied, checking that he had everything again before tightening the straps on his Kevlar vest and patting his chest as a means of a test-run. “’least this time it’s summer.”  
Brock took his rifle off of the rack. The feel of it in his hands and the familiarity of the setting stirred the visual in his head of how he had stood behind Vivienne all that time ago. He wondered fleetingly what would have happened if he hadn’t missed. He wondered, if he could have gone back to that time with the knowledge of everything that had transpired since then, if he would have still held onto her until the rescue team arrived. He could have so easily killed her then. So many things would have been different. Easier, maybe, and very different.   
What stirred him the most upon reflection was that he couldn’t answer himself when it came to her life. He couldn’t confidently say that he would have rather killed her than live through all of the same tough, stressful shit that probably wouldn’t have happened had she not been a part of STRIKE.  
But he hated thinking like that. He didn’t consider himself a nostalgic person and all of his training fought bitterly against allowing past situations to affect the all-important present. And so he swallowed it back again. Thoughts for a rainy day, maybe, when all of this was past them. He adjusted the strap on his rifle and pulled it over his shoulder.  
After re-confirming their pick-up coordinates with the pilot, Brock pulled his pack over his free shoulder. He followed Cooper off of the ramp and they trailed behind Henley and Crue on their way to the SUVs. 

The drive down the mountain was less than manageable—years of wear and ice melt across the sad excuse for a gravel road caused the path to be split more often than not by jarring ruts. The SUV’s suspension threatened to give out even when they slowed to a crawl.   
“Jesus Christ,” said Brock, downshifting again as they descended around another washed out switchback.   
He could tell that Vivienne was holding her breath, but she wasn’t going to say anything for fear of distracting him as they crunched above steep rail-less embankments.   
Rollins’ SUV bounced over the potholes behind them and Crue’s behind that.  
“I hope the dogs are ok.”  
Brock looked across at Vivienne. “I’m sure they’re fine. It’s a service, Vivienne. These guys are professionals. It’s not too hard to care for a dog.”  
Vivienne sighed. “Yeah, but they’re still so little.”  
“Yeah,” said Brock. He shifted again and the sped up a little as they hit a smooth stretch.   
“Cash is still being weird about his food.”  
“Vi,” said Brock, patting the steering wheel as an emphasizing point. “It’s Cass-ee-us. Not Cash-us.”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “I know, but Cash is a cute name.”  
“They’re Dobermans, not yorkies, for God’s sake.”  
Out of the corner of his eye, Brock could see Vivienne roll her eyes and tilt her head back in annoyance. Brock enjoyed the minute of silence before she started talking again.  
“Soo…We’re picking up, like, what? A Russian official or something?”  
“Not really.”  
“Ok,” said Vivienne.   
Brock knew she loved guessing games and, as much as he did enjoy his silence, he knew he also fed into her chatty habit. Something about how much she annoyed him sometimes was satisfying. It was like every once in a while he needed a check like that—like how a forest needed a fire.   
“Is it, like,…a prisoner, then?”  
“I wouldn’t say that.”  
“But it’s like that?”  
Brock stepped on the brakes again as they approached another downhill slide toward the edge of a ravine.   
“The guy’s gonna have a bag over his head. You’re not gonna see his face and he’s not gonna speak to you. Every few miles, we’re gonna switch it up and he’s gonna ride in a different car.”  
“Sounds like a prisoner.”  
“It’s not like that.”  
“Why would this be our job?” Asked Vivienne. “Why wouldn’t they get some guys at the base here to do it?”  
“Because there have been some problems with operations up here,” said Brock. “Remember the guys that abducted us last time? Same guys.”  
Vivienne was quiet as she sank back into thought. Brock watched the road, but he knew that she was having a hard time putting it all together. Probably because the pieces of the puzzle had been manipulated to fit and the resulting picture was so mismatched that nothing made sense. It was ok, though. Confusion begged order and obedience. He needed that from her. Regardless of whatever Insight might do to this..this thing between them, he wanted to make it worth it.

They turned off onto a different road as they approached the base of the mountain. This one was more maintained and the SUVs charged over the gravel, shooting rocks at eachother and throwing dust into the tall ancient trees. A few hours passed, the forest looked the same. If Vivienne hadn’t been awake for the whole ride, she would have thought that they had never really made any progress. She switched on the radio for a little bit, and although her Russian wasn’t necessarily lacking, it began to hurt her head to try to mentally translate everything that came from the speakers. She switched it off and propped her elbow at the base of the window, holding up her head in boredom.   
“Vivienne.”  
Vivienne looked over at Brock. “Hmm?”  
“I don’t think I would have changed anything,” Brock said, rubbing his bottom lip. “I mean about how everything turned out these what—past two years? I don’t think I would have gone back and done things differently.”  
Vivienne lifted her chin from her palm. “Are you looking for an argument?”  
Brock grimaced at the windshield. “No…?”  
“Huh.” Said Vivienne. “I would have changed so many things. What makes you think you lived your life out every day perfectly? What about all of the times that things weren’t so peachy?”  
“I still wouldn’t have changed it.”  
There was a silence. Vivienne frowned at the road.  
“I mean,” said Brock. “That things could have turned out very differently. I’m just saying that I’m satisfied with where things are at this moment.”  
“Hmm,” said Vivienne. She didn’t know if she agreed with him at all, but she could see the appeal in the concept. The past couple years had been rocky, but they had really flown by. “What’s been your golden moment out of all of this time up until now? What makes you say that you wouldn’t have changed anything?”  
Brock gazed at the road. It didn’t look like he had been searching for a particular piece of their memories. He had found one already and Vivienne could see him reimagine it, his lips slightly parting as he tried to put that feeling in his eyes into words. “That night we danced.”  
Vivienne felt her chest burn a little toward him. The reigniting of the memory was unexpected, but certainly wanted, especially when she had been feeling so empty lately. She willed herself not to say something snarky or sarcastic like she usually did—all of those habits of hers that broke these spells of…what was it?   
Vivienne smiled a little and looked back out the window. She didn’t think Brock expected her to say anything else, so she didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched the trees rushing by and the sharp snatching glares of sunlight that grabbed at them from between the passing branches.


	39. Hellbender Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bullets, betrayal, and Italian ice

Eventually, they rolled downhill into a ravine of sorts, their tires crackling over the gravel as they slowed to a stop outside of a massive cement structure. The place was in the shadow of a mountainous crevice, which caused an eerie shade to descent upon the party as they exited their vehicles.   
Vivienne closed the passenger side door and pulled at her aching stiff legs. Brock walked around the car slowly and surveyed the landscape around them.  
“Cooper, do a sweep.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
Vivienne straightened and looked up at the building. “SHIELD has awful taste.”  
The site was deathly quiet. Not even a faint wind stirred the branches of the weathered trees around the compound.   
After a minute, Cooper signaled to Brock that they were clear. Whether they were really clear or not, Vivienne still had a strange feeling that they were being watched. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she knew she wasn’t alone—Cooper’s quick eyes still darted around their rocky surroundings.   
Brock didn’t seem too worried, though. He checked his watch and folded his arms over his chest.  
“Should we knock or something?” Asked Vivienne.  
“If we had needed to knock, I would have done that already.”  
“Sheesh. OK.”  
Vivienne shifted her weight on a slung hip, impatiently squinting at the structure. She had already spent four hours in the car.   
They waited there for another ten minutes or so before Brock ordered a weapon standby. Vivienne pulled her new glock from her thigh holster, pointing it at the hard earth below them. Nobody seemed tensed by the order, so, after looking around to see what everybody else was doing, Vivienne finally allowed herself to calm down a little about it. As soon as she did, a windowless door on the side of the structure opened and three figures emerged, their black clothes melding with the shadows in the side of the hill. Two of the male figures were huge—man mountains in and of themselves. Between them, they escorted a smaller figure—densely-muscled and walking unsteadily. Waking may have been an overstatement. The guy was practically being supported and dragged at the same time by the two bigger men. He had a black sack over his head.  
Seeing SHIELD performing in such an inhumane manner stirred Vivienne a little. The prisoner was obviously drugged. She didn’t know what he had done, but in her studies at the academy, prisoners were detained and transported with less invasive and much more professional techniques. This man that was being dragged toward them pulled with him an uneasy aura that filled Vivienne to her core. She hoped the feeling wouldn’t interfere with her performance on the job. This was important. She needed to focus.  
They staggered to a stop outside the middle SUV. Rollins opened the back door for them and the two men pushed the middle toward the vehicle. When the prisoner was secured inside, Cooper, under order from Rumlow, got into the back with him and one of the men while the other captor approached Brock.  
“Agent Rumlow,” he said in greeting.  
Vivienne immediately detected an accent. It wasn’t Russian, though.   
“Albrecht.”  
German.  
Rumlow went forward and caught the hand that was extended to him. “It’s been a while.”  
“Hong Kong, if I remember correctly.”  
Brock nodded curtly. “You’re right.”  
“I’ve got some less than satisfactory news,” said Agent Albrecht. He lowered his voice, but Vivienne was standing close enough to Brock to hear them. She pretended not to listen. “The last group we had roll out of here were ambushed. It’s Leviathan. They’ve been swarming our outposts and flushing our guys out of their bases. There are more of them than we thought.”  
Vivienne caught a funny peripheral glance from Brock before he took Albrecht by the shoulder and stepped away from the group a little further. She strained to listen, but it was hard to hear everything.  
“That’s why we’re moving him. Is Firethorn in danger of being taken?”  
Albrecht looked back at the windowless structure behind him. “We don’t know. But it’s better being safe. The problem right now is that we can’t maintain the scheduled route. They’ve taken over that road. Our last group we sent through there was massacred.”  
“Then that would take us through Mogocha.”  
“Yes.”  
“There’s no other route. How do we know they haven’t taken Mogocha? Not only would we be exposing ourselves to these civilians—we would be forced to defend ourselves and then what? Risk getting discovered by Toporik??”  
Vivienne had heard that name before. Toporik. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she had heard it at the academy. She struggled to remember.  
“Leviathan is primarily in the North right now, according to recent intel,” said Albrecht.  
“How recent?”  
“Yesterday.”  
Brock pulled at the back of his neck tiredly with interlaced fingers. He sighed, looking back at the road from which they had come earlier. Vivienne could see his shoulders were tensed and if she could see his face, she knew the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes would have been visible as he went over the whole situation, squinting irritably in search of some answer in the road before him.   
“Fine,” he said. “We’re wasting enough time discussing this. The Southern route is going to be longer, so we need to get a move on.”  
Albrecht nodded, not saying another word. Rumlow had that impression on people. His disappointment always seemed so personal, even when the blame couldn’t be set on a specific person.   
The German agent went toward the SUV that bore the prisoner. He settled into the front passenger seat and Rollins finally got in on the other side and shut the door.   
Brock shook his head in the midst of such a decision and started back toward where Vivienne stood waiting.   
“C’mon,” he said, nodding toward the SUV they had only just freed themselves from. “We’ve got a long ways to go.”

 

The sound of the washing machine down the hall hummed through the walls with a lulling cadence that tempted sleep to overtake Steve’s senses. He had been sitting up—drawing, actually—while he waited for his load of laundry to finish its cycle. He had tried to go to bed earlier, but he hadn’t been able to fall asleep even though he had been even more weary than he usually was. He had read somewhere that it was unhealthy to lay in bed trying to coax one’s self back to sleep, so he had gotten back up again and he had made himself busy with putting the finishing touches on the drawing he had been working on.   
Now, though, he had started to nod off, his eyelids feeling particularly heavy.   
That was, until his cell phone rang, sharply fending off any intention he had once had of closing his eyes. He looked tiredly over at where the phone sat on his coffee table, part of him considering just to ignore the call. If it was important, they could leave a message, couldn’t they?  
Steve waited until what he knew was the last ring before he swiped the phone from the table and answered.  
“Hello?”  
It was Bradshaw.   
Steve pulled his feet off of the end of the couch and set them on the floor, straightening up when he heard her voice. “Is there something wrong?”  
“You won’t believe it—“  
“Try me.”  
“STRIKE is gone again.”  
Steve sighed. “Ha. Funny.”  
“What?”  
“Agent Rumlow called off the Sim today so that everyone could catch up on their reports….You know, because everyone is missing reports. So yes, they’ve all been gone today…” Steve only realized what he had said and how stupid it had sounded after he had said it. “Cassidy?”  
“You get it now? There’s actually no punchline. I wasn’t joking.”  
Steve got to his feet, the urgency of the situation fueling him with an all-new energy. “How do you know they’re gone?”  
“I made a deal with one of the hangar guys. He slipped a tracker onto Delta’s quinjet.”  
Steve gritted his teeth. He had thought that maybe Rumlow was becoming somewhat more reasonable recently, but he knew he had been naïve to have fallen for that front. He grabbed his jacket off of the couch and went towards the door of his apartment where his boots waited for him. “Where are they?” he growled.   
“Meet me at the Triskelion and we can talk there.”  
Steve ended the call and laced into his boots. He wrenched open the door as soon as his fingers left the strings and left it with a slam.

“This is a load of shit,” Cassidy Bradshaw muttered to herself, ending the call on her car Bluetooth. She turned onto the exit ramp that led toward the Triskelion. She had almost made it to the OBSIDIAN headquarters upstate before the tracker had been activated on Delta’s quinjet. Two hours out turned to two hours back. Sometimes she really hated her job.   
She supposed it was instances like that which earned her position the terrible reputation of having such a massive turnover rate. Working with SHIELD was always…stimulating. Her predecessor had been relocated to the Bahamas and was currently seeing a top-notch therapist on the company’s dime. OBSIDIAN knew the mental toll their practices put on their agents—at least they owned up to it.  
Cassidy had figured that this particular assignment she had taken with SHIELD might be taxing before she signed the paperwork. It was an attempt to uproot nefarious activity within an agency world-renowned for their secrecy. Of course it was going to resemble more of a hurricane inside of a tornado as opposed to a “breeze”, but that was how she got her kicks and it beat sitting behind a desk and filing paperwork like she knew many of her fellow OBSIDIAN agents did.   
She slowed the car a little and turned onto the bridge that led out toward the Triskelion.   
The building loomed in the darkness over the water, spotlights shooting spiky beams of light up the sides of the structure at the front of the building. The rest of its frame was surrendered completely to the blackness of the night.   
She rolled down her window as she approached the security gate, handing the guard her ID.   
“Lieutenant,” the guard said, nodding at her. He opened the gate and she went through.   
The skeleton night crew was there—baggy-eyed individuals who moved around like ghosts with cups of coffee from the terrible café downstairs in hand. Cassidy wondered who the hell might think that drinking that coffee might be ok.  
“Cassidy!”  
Cassidy stopped short from her brisk beeline toward the elevator and looked over her shoulder to see Steve jogging toward her from the security booths.   
“Wow,” she said, impressed. “You sure got here fast.”  
Steve reached her and kept going, touching her shoulder as an invitation to keep walking. “Not fast enough,” he said.   
Cassidy thought he looked a little haggard. “Sleeping?”  
“Almost.”  
She wrinkled her nose with a grimace. “Sucks.”  
“Yeah it does,” said Steve. “But I definitely wouldn’t trade this opportunity right now for a good night’s rest.”  
“Are we—“  
“We’re going to the hangars,” said Steve, explaining as they slid through another security booth. “I cleared a flight on the way here. Fill me in. Where are we going?”  
Cassidy cleared her throat, flipping over her tablet and opening the screen. “They stopped in Alaska”  
Steve blinked, turning to her a little. “Alaska?”  
Cassidy shrugged, pointing at the screen. “Hey, I’m just reading what I’m seeing here. They stopped in Nome Alaska and they’ve been there for a while.”  
“Ok…”  
They approached the hall that branched off toward the back gymnasiums that STRIKE used, but it seemed like Steve had no intention of slowing down.   
Cassidy made a show of looking around at the hall that they were rapidly passing to try to give Steve a chance to turn. He didn’t.   
“Um. Our gear…?”  
“Already loaded,” said Steve. “Like I said, I called ahead. I’m not going to waste any time here. I don’t want to miss an opportunity…”  
Cassidy was impressed. The guy knew how to hustle.   
They jogged the last hallway down toward the hangars, their anticipation growing and urging them forward, faster, as they came closer to the door at the end of the hall. Cassidy wondered if this could be it—their lucky break—their chance to catch Rumlow and STRIKE in the midst of their not-so-secret operation.  
When they went through the doors, Cassidy was filled with such sudden excitement for the thrill of it all—the thrill of finally being able to bring some sort of evidence to Fury’s desk. 

 

 

 

Vivienne had been hesitant to ask Brock what had been bothering him. She knew a part of what she had heard, but she still didn’t really understand what the weight of it was to him. She knew he was frustrated, but he had been doing that silent thing that he did sometimes—gripping the steering wheel with fingers that were turning white, the red flush in his chees and ears, the permanent frown that brought out the creases next to his nostrils. She didn’t know how to react to that sometimes. He was older than her, so she felt immediately that she might not have any wisdom to offer to him. He could also be extremely touchy in this state—his temper was explosive enough as it was.   
Still, it was doing him no good to sit in the car alone with her and stew on whatever his problem was for that long. He had already preoccupied himself with that activity for what had to have been over an hour.  
Vivienne watched him, waiting for him to notice her out of his peripherals. When he turned and looked at her finally, she raised her eyebrows. “You good?”  
“Never better, Vivienne.”  
Vivienne sensed the sarcasm and immediately regretted having prodded him. “Well, I’m just saying—you’re gonna break the fucking steering wheel or your hand—whichever comes first.”  
Brock sighed, loosening up on the wheel a bit.   
“Better,” said Vivienne. “Now what’s the deal?”  
“It’s an alternate route,” said Brock. “And we don’t have time for that. My bosses are already up my ass as it is.”  
Vivienne shrugged. “Well wouldn’t they understand if you were avoiding, like, the kill zone or whatever?”  
Brock looked at her hard. “No.”  
Vivienne shook her head, looking back out the window at the passing scenery. “They sound like douchebags.”  
“That’s one word to describe them.”  
“So then where are we going now?”  
“Through a smallish town,” said Brock. He looked in his rearview mirror and adjusted it a little. “Mogocha.”  
Vivienne eyed him as he scanned the road behind them. Brock barely allowed himself to settle back behind the steering wheel when he pried his gaze from the mirror.   
“Should we…be expecting company?” Asked Vivienne, looking instinctively at the mirror outside her window.  
“Not according to old intel, but,” said Brock, the syllable puncturing the space between them with the irritation Vivienne was trying to get him to suppress. “The key word there is ‘old’. Old intel is not gonna do shit for us.”  
Vivienne nodded to humor him. “Mhm.”  
They passed a sign for Mogocha. It was still a ways to go. Vivienne settled back a little. She pulled out her phone to fiddle with, forgot that she wouldn’t get any service, and stowed it again, crossing her arms impatiently.   
“So what about you?”  
Vivienne looked over at Brock. “What.”  
“How…” Brock looked like the words tasted funny in his mouth. “How have you been? It seemed like this thing with Barton bothered you…”  
“Tch,” Vivienne shook her head. “It’s whatever. I’m not mad about it or anything. It was stupid and it’s over.”  
“Alright…”  
Vivienne tried to be casual, but she didn’t pause long enough before she spoke, so it came out more like a blurt. “Why do you care?”  
“You were upset, Vi.”  
“So? That hasn’t seemed to matter to you before.”  
Brock sighed. “It was a question. I’m just—I’m just asking you a question, Vivienne. You don’t have to be all defensive. Let’s drop it.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “It’s at least a start to pretend like you care, isn’t it?”  
Brock looked over at her flatly. “Oh please, Vivienne. I don’t need this right now.”  
“Fine.”  
The next ten minutes were silent and honestly, the tension was much worse than it had been before. Vivienne stared hard out the front windshield, clenching her molars as she thought about how nice she had been to spare him the drama this time. It was really more than he deserved, but she also knew he was probably just as frustrated as she was right now. They had both been stuck in a car for longer than anyone would really want to be trapped in a car together and the road and the situation didn’t help the tension.   
She decided that it she could back off, be the bigger person, avoid confrontation. She sighed and settled back into her seat.  
The silence didn’t last but another few minutes.  
“You knew what you signed on for before we started screwing. If you wanted prince charming, you should have flown off into the sunset with Agent Barton.”  
Clearly, Brock hadn’t come to the same conclusion that she had. Vivienne smiled, but there was no humor or sincerity to it. She imagined for a moment the world in which the better part of her would shrug it off—let it slide.  
Instead, she mustered the most condescending tone that she could. “Woww. Seriously, Brock? You’re what? Thirty-five? You’re acting like a goddamn highschooler!”  
“Thirty-nine,” corrected Brock.  
“That’s worse.” Said Vivienne, hesitating a second when she realized exactly how large the age gap was between them. No wonder they were never really on the same wavelength.   
“Why are you so jealous? Like you said, you also knew what you signed on for. That doesn’t mean I can’t spend time with other people. But anyways that doesn’t even fucking matter right now because Clint went to LA and he’s not coming back.”  
There was another long silence.  
“Good.”  
“Shut the fuck up.”  
“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m your fucking commanding officer, Agent Donahue.”  
This time Vivienne laughed. She laughed until she knew that Brock had built up enough irritation toward her that she was surprised he hadn’t snapped.   
“Get it?” She said, smiling. “Get it? Fucking commanding officer? Ah, I’m dead. Who would have thought an asshole like you could have been so funny??”  
Brock blinked slowly, but he didn’t look at her. He was holding it all back.  
Vivienne’s smile faded after a few minutes. She swallowed back more biting remarks. It wasn’t helping anything. It was something to do, was all.  
It seemed like everything between them always boiled down to this. Hit or miss. She hated that things like car rides could bring out that ugly truth between them.  
“I’m sorry,” she said. It surprised her, but she meant it.  
Brock’s jaw flexed. “Sure.”  
She wanted to confess it to Brock. Confess what Clint had told her—that he loved her. But she had hurt him deep enough. It would be too obvious that she regretted sometimes having rejected her friend that was now miles and miles away. Brock didn’t need that right now. He was right.   
Instead, Vivienne shut up and watched the road ahead. 

 

The outskirts of Mogocha reminded Vivienne of the United States Midwest. The road had finally straightened and they had left the mountains when they came to the end of a long tunnel of trees. Now there were very few trees and the landscape seemed like it had been scraped by the abrasive Russian winter winds, the evidence still obvious in the late summer across the expanse of long yellowed grass. They dove on, the occasional farmhouse flitting by the passenger side widow more often until small clumps of civilization became visible in the distance.   
Brock touched his earpiece. “Approaching Mogocha. We’re gonna try to hit the backstreets so as not to draw too much attention. I don’t want anybody telling on us for invading their space.”  
“Affirmative.” Vivienne heard over her comm line.   
“Car three, I want you to take the lead so that our cargo has got some protection here,” said Brock, slowing the SUV. “We’ll switch up again and I’ll take our package after Mogocha.”  
“On it.”  
Vivienne watched the SUV behind them peel out from the motorcade and accelerate past them. She tried to wave at Rollins’ steely face, but he chose not to take notice. Vivienne straightened a little and loosened up her seatbelt, which had tightened after all of her attempts to get comfortable the past few hours.   
They turned onto a narrow road that would run by several large grain silos that were set back behind the small residential community. They passed by the rows of low-rent properties that were situated across the street from the looming silos. Vivienne looked out her window. A group of boys, varying ages, most likely around ten and twelve, had stopped on the sidewalk to watch their motorcade roll by. One held an armful of towels and they were all dressed to swim. Clearly they had been on their way to cool off when they stopped to watch the procession. Vivienne made eye contact with one of them—the one with the towels. She guessed their once-shiny black SUVs weren’t really common in Mogocha by the way he stared. She had never felt so distanced from another human being.   
Vivienne watched him stand with his friends in the rearview mirror, wondering how she should feel about their wordless exchange.   
They passed under the shadow of another one of the silos.   
“So much for keeping a low profile,” Vivienne said. “Those kids—“  
She had started to voice her concerns, but was cut off when Brock stood suddenly on the brakes. She instinctively put her arm out as her seatbelt yanked into her chest. Her palm smacked onto the dashboard.   
“What the f—“  
There was a sharp crack—the sound of a bullet piercing glass.  
“FFFuck--!”  
The reverse lights lit suddenly up on the SUV in front of them and Brock slapped the gearshift into reverse. Vivienne looked wildly around as their SUV swung hard into a backwards U.   
“Why are we—?!” Then she saw it. It was so fleeting and quick that she doubted she would have even noticed it if someone else hadn’t seen it first. The gleam of a sniper’s scope at the top of the silo in front of them. Vivienne whirled around in her seat to try to get a better look. “Shit! Jesus Christ! How did they find us??”  
“Just—“ Brock slammed on the brakes again as the SUV they needed to protect reversed past them. Vivienne’s head smacked into the headrest. “Sit down and shut up! You’re gonna get shot—”  
The smell of rubber and brakes funneled through the air conditioning system as Brock shifted back into gear and peeled after the targeted SUV. The sniper had gotten a shot through the window of the other vehicle. The broken glass exposed the inside of the car from the back passenger window, but the occupants were huddled below the seats and out of sight. A surge of realization seared through Vivienne’s nerves and she reached for her earpiece.   
Brock reacted first, jamming his fingers against his mic. “Was there a hit?? DID-WE-GET-HIT??”  
Cooper’s voice came over the comm.   
“Bullet grazed the asset on the neck. An inch to the left and we woulda had a problem. He’s barely bleedin’. He’s not dyin’ on us.”  
“Goddamn it!” Brock hit the steering wheel and checked the rearview mirror again.   
“We have a tail!” came Rollins’ voice over the comms.   
Vivienne looked out the back window to see a pack of motorcycles swivel into pursuit from behind the silo that had harbored the sniper.   
“Cooper and Rollins your goddamn job is to GET OUT. I don’t want to see your faces until we’re in Itaka. Is that understood??”  
“Yes Sir,” said Rollins. “We would do that, but our vehicle is marked, they know which one is ours.”  
“Fuck.”  
Vivienne exchanged a look with Brock before she made a split decision and hurriedly drew her glock from its holster. She unbuckled her seatbelt.  
“HeyheyHEY--!” said Brock, grabbing her arm.   
Vivienne shook off his grip with an annoyed grimace. “Hey yourself.”  
She shot out the back glass of their SUV.   
Brock immediately realized her intentions and jammed a finger back into his earpiece. “Albrecht! Rollins! Right at the alley, engaging in minus ten meters! Albrecht, you pull your break and fall back immediately, let Rollins and the cargo pass—Rollins, you get the fuck out of here—we need the asset safe!”  
“Affirmative!”  
“Yes, Sir!”  
“NOW!”  
Vivienne clenched the headrest as the SUV swerved suddenly to the right. The tires squealed and bumped over the curb.  
“Jesus Christ!” She heard Brock growl between clenched teeth  
The car veered in an unstable zig-zag for a moment and they shot past the SUV that Albrecht drove. The German Agent floored it again when they were past him and caught up to their bumper just in time before they had to dodge another parked car. Vivienne could see the motorcycles turn into the alley past the back of Albrecht’s vehicle.   
As if in slow motion, Vivienne saw the passenger side window of the SUV behind them roll down and the black shape of a sawed-off appeared.  
Something about the sight felt eerily wrong. It was probably that, regardless of an entire arm having emerged from the vehicle along with the gun, their SUV was still very much in the scope of the weapon.  
She felt a hot wave of realization flash across her chest. “BROCK GET DOWN—NOW!“  
She immediately crouched back behind her seat and reached out to grab Brock’s shoulder just as a shot erupted into the back of their car. The spray of ammo ripped through the seat cushions and pelted into the SUV’s bumper. Vivienne felt the telltale burning sensation as shards of metal scraped over her arm. It wouldn’t kill her, but it hurt like a bitch.   
Brock swore, ducking lower. “What the FUCK was that??”  
Vivienne didn’t even hesitate. She haphazardly took aim at the SUV that was lurching closer to their bumper “KEEP DRIVING!”  
She fired three quick shots. Two of them managed to pierce the windshield and the SUV swerved, but it didn’t stop.   
Brock caught on to what was happening and he looked hard into the rearview mirror, slapping his comm line. “WHAT THE FUCK, ALBRECHT? Are you FUCKING SHOOTING at us?? Jesus Christ!! WHAT THE FUCK!”  
Albrecht’s voice came through the comm line as Vivienne tried to steady her aim.  
“Pull over, Rumlow—there are more of us than there are of you. If the asset survives, we may let you and your team live.”  
“Is he fucking serious??”  
“GodDAMN IT!” shouted Brock, pounding a palm into the steering wheel.  
Vivienne looked back at the SUV behind them.  
“What the FUCK are you waiting for, Vivienne??” Barked Brock. “SHOOT!”  
Vivienne pulled the trigger, the glock kicking back in her white-fingered grasp with the recoil. The first two bullets found their mark into the passenger that wielded the sawed-off. The gun fell from the shooter’s hand a minute later and the arm hung limply from the open window. The SUV leapt forward with a burst of speed then; no need for a steady ride anymore. Vivienne squeezed off three more shots, but the potholes they dipped through and veered around that infested the back road threw off her aim. With a roar, the SUV behind them surged forward, the front bumper colliding with their tailgate with a crunch. Vivienne sank her fingertips into the headrest to keep herself from falling back with the impact. The car veered suddenly to the side again and Vivienne felt Brock grab her vest to keep her from losing her balance. They screeched back onto a main road, the tires causing the body of the car to shudder as they searched for traction. The back end of the vehicle wagged as they accelerated again and the air was filled with the smell of rubber.  
Vivienne fought gravity as she pulled herself back up in the seat, throwing an arm over the headrest to anchor herself. She brought the gun back over and steadied her arm just in time to see their tail charge out of the back alley after them.   
“Shoot that motherfucker now, Vi!”  
Vivienne breathed. Brock kept their path straight. She fired.  
The SUV behind them suddenly veered to the side. The momentum that it had gained pushed the back end of the vehicle up and the SUV was sent into a forward flip. The crunching of metal was audible even over the sound of their heaving engine as they sped away.  
Vivienne was breathless. She grinned over at Brock “Oh-hoh-oh my GOD! Did you see that??”  
“Turn around, Vivienne!”  
Vivienne turned.   
The motorcycles that had initially started the chase were blockading the road ahead and the men had dismounted their bikes.   
“Buckle your ass!”  
Vivienne squirmed back down into her seat and yanked her buckle across her chest. The men lifted their assault rifles  
Brock suddenly pulled on the wheel and pulled up on the emergency break just as Vivienne’s buckle clicked into place. The SUV swung to the right and off of the road, charging town a slight embankment as bullets pelted the side of the car. The other SUV—the one with the asset—was nowhere in sight. Vivienne hoped that they had somehow gotten away.  
The suspension bounced and the entire truck rocked back and forth as they flew over the grass toward the road and another residential section down the hill.   
Brock looked into the rearview mirror.   
“Do you think they fell for the shot-out glass thing?” Vivienne asked, putting into words the thought that was on both of their minds. She cast a glance over her shoulder and out the back of the car. “You think that they might believe we’ve got…the asset?”  
As soon as the words left her lips, the bikes charged over the hill after them..  
Brock stepped on the gas again, pulling back onto the pavement as they accelerated. “I think it’s safe to assume,” he muttered.  
They had an easy head start, though, and they were soon out of the bikers’ sightline when they turned onto one of the many side streets. Brock immediately turned again onto a smaller gravel road that plunged into a tree-lined path. He decelerated once they had followed the path as far as he deemed necessary and then pulled the car immediately through the treeline.   
Vivienne looked out the window to see where they were headed. A weathered structure that had once probably been a barn stood just a short distance away. She glanced back behind them. There was no sight of the motorcycles.   
They pulled up and behind the old wooden building, slowing to a stop only once they had made to the doors. Brock undid his seatbelt and slung open the door. He walked fast over to the entrance, pushing on the decrepit wooden panels until the rusted hinges remembered their jobs and allowed him passage. He pushed the doors open all the way and then jogged back over to the SUV.   
Vivienne cast one last glance around before Brock pulled the car into the dark shade of the barn.   
“Pretty impressive, Tiger.”  
Brock pushed clawed fingers through his hair and cut off the engine.

 

“Piña Colada.”  
Steve looked up from his sketch pad. After having exhausted all of the means that he could to give them a head start once their feet touched the ground in Alaska, he found himself with a little over an hour to spare and nothing to do. He kept his sketch pad in his bag for times like this. Drawing helped him clear his mind, relax his senses. Now he looked up at Cassidy Bradshaw, who was leaning over him and studying his art.  
“…Sorry?”  
“You know,” said Cassidy, sighing. She held up jazz hands and sang part of a jingle “What’s your favorite flaaa-vor..”  
“Oh,” said Steve, smiling. “You’re right. It’s Giovanni’s Italian Ice. The place is a short walk from my apartment, so I see it all the time.”  
“No kidding,” said Bradshaw. “That’s pretty spot-on. Got it right down to that terribly gaudy overhang.”  
Steve looked back over his drawing. “The place has a great history.”  
“And a great piña colada Italian ice.”  
“Agreed.”  
“That should be something to do if we can pull this mission off,” said Bradshaw, walking around the bench to sit down next to him. “You can take me there,” she tapped the sketchpad. “And you can buy me an Italian ice for a job well done.”  
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Steve. He didn’t realize the lack of sureness in his voice until Bradshaw called him out on it. Not in so many words, but in the way she narrowed he eyes a little when he looked over at her.  
“It’s ok if you don’t want to,” said Cassidy. “You’re not going to hurt my feelings.”  
Steve shook his head. “No, no. it’s not that at all. It’s just this feeling that I’ve had in my gut since we took off. STRIKE has been one step ahead this whole time…”  
“You think we can’t nail them on this one?”  
He searched her face for some sort of mutual feeling, but there was none.   
“It wouldn’t be for lack of us trying.”  
Bradshaw sat back a little, thinking. The quinjet tilted a little as it found its coarse.   
Steve watched her tuck the few longer strands of her bangs back behind her ears. It felt like they had been trying to crack this case forever. The thought of finally being able to find something to pin STRIKE with just seemed…easy. It wasn’t as if STRIKE was never going to slip, but it did feel like, after all this time, surely they would have to work harder to find that flaw that would break them. But maybe he was wrong.  
Cassidy seemed more motivated than he did at this point. Driven—maybe she wanted to be done with it all just like he did. One could only wade through so much muck before realizing how futile it all seemed. He admired her confidence.  
She looked back over at him. “I hate my job. But you already knew that. It’s frustrating and impossible and I just feel like an overworked and underpaid babysitter. But—I have to be able to see the end game to motivate myself to get through all this shit and I do. I see it and I think this is a huge step toward that. This mission might not be the success that we want, but I think it’ll still help.”  
Steve nodded.   
“Don’t crush my dreams here, Captain,” said Cassidy with a smirk. “I’m not going to let you get out of that Italian ice date that easy.”


	40. Hellbender Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some sort of a new plan is formed and HYDRA pulls the emergency brake on Bradshaw and Cap's plans.

Vivienne pulled her knees to her chest as she sat atop the hood of the battered SUV. She had just managed to pick the last few shards of metal out of her arm and had dressed her cuts with the materials she found in the first aid kit in the car. Now she was free to sit and watch Brock pacing again. They couldn’t use their comm lines to check up on Rollins in case the frequency was compromised. Brock had slowly pulled his phone out of his pocket in a spiderweb of broken parts all interconnected by wiring. The look on his face could be described as “disappointed” in the least amount of insufficient words. Vivienne knew it wasn’t funny, but she had to suppress a laugh anyways. Her phone didn’t even work this far overseas. It was all comical—this situation. They were being hunted in a town they knew nothing about in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere in Russia. How the hell would they get out alive? The question stumped them for sure. Brock had been pacing, trying to walk through some plan of escape in his mind for the last thirty minutes. So far they had not been discovered by the men searching for them, but it was only a matter of time.   
Vivienne patted her knees impatiently. “Well,” she said. “So much for your friend, huh?”  
Brock stopped pacing and closed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “You have to know the meaning of a word before you use it in a sentence, Vivienne.”  
“Oh.” Said Vivienne. “Not your friend, then. I probably should have gathered that when they started shooting at us.”  
Brock opened his eyes again to give Vivienne a withering look.   
“Can’t we just…leave the barn on foot or something?” Asked Vivienne. “Since they would definitely recognize our vehicle.”  
“You think we wouldn’t stand out?” said Brock. “Look at us.”  
Vivienne shrugged. “We could leave at night.”  
“That would be expected.”  
“Would it? Do they even know that we are still in town?”  
“C’mon Vivienne. Those guys would have had the roads closed off. No way out. It’s how they operate.”  
Vivienne leaned forward. “Who? It’s how who operates? Who are these people?”  
Brock shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”  
“Same people as last time. The time we almost got killed.”  
“Yeah.”  
Vivienne slid off of the hood of the car and pulled her feet one at a time behind her back, stretching. “So you’re not going to tell me. You’re just going to keep me guessing. Sounds smart. Keep me in the dark, expect me to help you.”  
Brock snorted. “Help me? Help us you mean?”  
“Whatever.”  
The barn fell into a deep silence for the next few minutes. Brock stared at the opposite wall in concentration. Vivienne checked out the surroundings.  
There was a small room in the back of the barn. Dirt and hay littered an old and likely nonfunctional chair and desk set. A small window in the corner let in a little of the light from the sunset beyond—oranges filtered through the grimey glass panes and lit the interior of the room ablaze with the color of it.   
Vivienne stepped cautiously into the space, noting that part of the ceiling had collapsed, leaving a hole which exposed the upper woodwork of the structure beams. She started to step over a large pile of hay when the toe of her boot caught on something solid and she stumbled and fell over the pile, which definitely didn’t feel like a pile of hay when she landed on it. She smiled a little at her own stupidity and coughed, waving a hand in front of her face to fan away the dust particles that she had disturbed. She pushed back up off of what felt like a large box and brushed a hand over the top of it. It was a trunk.  
Vivienne dusted off most of the rest of the trunk and grunted a little with the force it took to get the clasp open. The hinges had mostly rusted together. The top popped open and Vivienne lifted it up.

 

Brock glared hard at the wall across from him. The sun was going down and the interior of the barn was sinking deeper into shadow. Fucking Albrecht. Apparently Hong Kong hadn’t done enough to strengthen their relationship. He wasn’t entirely surprised the guy sold him out, but he definitely wasn’t happy about it. He hoped to whatever God there might be that Rollins and Cooper and Crue had gotten away all right with the asset. As for Henley—he had been riding with Albrecht. If he was still alive, it was highly unlikely that he was going to be alive much longer. He never really liked the guy, but he had gotten them this far by covering their tracks and tampering with the records for the team.   
He sighed, feeling the weight of how tired he was in his neck and over his shoulders. What a fucking mess. He didn’t even have the liberty of being able to consider whether or not he might get out of this alive for fear of being incapable of finishing the mission. Even if he did get out alive, and the mission was a bust, he was a dead man anyways. Dead like dead.  
He was about to walk around the back of the car to see exactly what he and Vivienne had at their disposal when there was a scuffling sound towards the back of the barn. He heard a muted laugh follow. Brock made a face. Vivienne was good when she focused, but he would rather have Rollins by his side in situations like these. He didn’t play.  
Brock walked towards the sound and found the door to a room in the back of the barn. He stepped cautiously through the hay and toward the space.   
Vivienne suddenly rushed out of the doorway and almost collided into him. “Brock—!”  
“Jesus! Easy, Kid—what—?” Brock noticed the rag towels and in her arms. He narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”  
Vivienne nodded back toward the room. “There was a trunk! And look!” She tipped the towels out of her arms to reveal an ancient mobile radio phone, cord, box, and all. “We can use this, can’t we?”  
Brock grabbed the phone and its box. “If it’s not fucking dead. It’s been decades since these things have been around and who the hell knows what this has been victim to over the years?”  
“It was in a trunk. I feel like it would be fine.”  
Brock could read the irritation in her voice, but he chose to ignore it.   
“If we used it, they would be able to track our frequency immediately,” he said. “It destroys the whole point of us remaining undercover. It would be unrealistic to assume that they aren’t scanning every damn frequency in the air around here.”  
“Well,” said Vivienne. “I took tech classes at the academy. The blocker on your phone is pretty much indestructible, meaning that I can take the blocker out of what’s left in your phone and hook it up to this one. I just need some wiring and a screw driver and some other stuff.”  
For the first time in the last couple hours, some of the tension left Brock’s shoulders, but he quickly reminded himself that the ordeal was far from over. “How the hell are we going to get that without someone seeing all of this?” He motioned to the tactical gear and dress that covered their bodies.  
Vivienne looked at him. “Isn’t that your area of expertise?”  
Brock sighed. “This is gonna be tough. No doubt they’ve got the whole town on lockdown by now. We so much as step into a streetlight and we’ve got these commie pricks up our asses.”  
“Right,” said Vivienne, taking the phone back from him. “I feel like I’m game for a challenge.” 

 

 

Cooper watched through the windshield as Rollins stood in the light of the headlights with the Asset. His hand hadn’t moved away from the grip of his Sig Sauer since they had left the vehicle. Maybe the piss break would be just that—a piss break. Either way, be didn’t need for Jack to get jumped by the prisoner with his pants down. Literally.   
The ride out of Mogocha had been tense, but it seemed that Rumlow had effectively lost their tail. The problem with that was that now Rumlow, Donahue, and Henley were MIA and they had actually backtracked instead of getting any closer to where they needed to bring the drugged guy with the metal arm. Rollins hadn’t bothered to explain anything, so Cooper was in the dark as to what the hell they were doing now. They had been driving for a little over two hours, now. Crue had tried without success to contact Rumlow.  
“Fuck this.”  
Cooper raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t take his eyes off of the two who stood outside the car. “What.”  
“This is a bullshit mission.” Said Crue. “Why didn’t they get their own people to handle this? STRIKE isn’t expendable.”  
“That’s what you’d like to think,” said Cooper. “But that’s not really true, is it? It seems none of y’all are on the same page as each other on that concept.”  
Crue was quiet for a minute. “They need us too much…” He didn’t sound certain.  
Cooper watched Rollins’ back as the guy zipped up and turned around to grab the Asset by the shoulder again. He led him back toward the car.   
“Don’t you worry too much about it, muscle-man,” he said. He was terrible at reassuring people, but he tried anyways. “No-one’s getting killed out here.”  
The back passenger side door opened and Cooper watched in the mirror as the asset was loaded back into the SUV. As soon as the door shut, Rollins walked around the front of the car and opened the drivers’ side door again. He sank into the seat behind the wheel and reached for the gearshift. As he looked over intently at the swarthy agent, Cooper knew that Jack was purposefully avoiding his gaze. He wouldn’t look at him.  
There was no control here.  
They were lost and uncertain, something that Rollins had promised wouldn’t happen to them—not before they would make that push through Insight.  
Not before they were free.   
Even as they started driving again, Cooper had a sinking feeling in his chest. Not one that might act as some sort of prophetic warning or death omen, but one that reminded him again of everything that he could lose.

 

“Are you fucking kidding me??”   
Steve watched Bradshaw smack the counter hard with her palm. He felt the same way. They had just landed in Alaska. The tracker that had been slipped onto Delta’s quinjet had been active all the way up to that point, but the quinjet was nowhere in sight. Apart from their ride, the hangar was empty. The control tower had records of the team landing and fueling, but apart from that, there was no other information given about where they would be headed. The lazy little SHIELD outpost had been quiet that week apart from handling the two flights, so it was unclear as to why the information the officials there were giving them was so ridiculously vague.  
“Easy,” said Cap to Bradshaw, taking his turn at the counter. “We’re just looking for something they may have left behind. Can we look around your hangar space?”  
The officer looked between the two and touched his earpiece. “Sir, the two agents that just arrived are asking permission to enter the hangars to search for…” He trailed off, looking over at Steve expectantly.   
Steve exhaled, trying to bring his temper down a few notches. “That’s classified.”  
The officer’s mouth pressed into a flat line. “Classified material.”  
There was a long pause during which the muted sound of talking on the other end warbled on. Steve was getting annoyed. Technically, this should have never had to turn into such a procedure. His clearance level was high enough so that he thought that he wouldn’t really need to explain himself, especially to the officer standing across from him. But he understood orders and he recognized and respected the chain of command like everybody else in SHIELD. It was just moments like these that he wished he wasn’t such a nice person. Tony Stark would have just invited himself right inside.   
“No.”  
Steve looked back across at the officer. It appeared that he was talking to them.  
“Excuse me?”  
“I don’t have the authority to—“  
“Fuck this!” Bradshaw smacked the counter again. “We came all this fucking way—Who the hell is your supervisor??”  
Steve took a breath. “Easy, Cassidy—“  
“No, Steve!” Bradshaw’s cheeks were reddening the more she worked herself up. “We’re so close!”  
Steve looked at her. She was passionate—motivated.   
“We need to talk to your supervisor.” He said, turning back to the officer. “In person.”  
And so they waited. The officer disappeared, they sat in the tiny receiving area. They had first waited in tensed silence, fuming a little still. Then, after the first ten minutes, the pair simmered down into an annoyed period of waiting, the tempo of which was kept by Steve’s tapping foot. Now, almost forty-five minutes later, they had begun to sink into a zombie-like trance as they waited. Bradshaw stared at the dusty fake fern that was pushed a little too far in front of the window. Steve locked eyes with the moose bust that hung proudly from the wall above Bradshaw’s head.   
The doors at the other end of the room finally opened and a different agent stepped through. He was tall and more trim-looking than the man who had left them before.   
“Took you long enough,” said Bradshaw.  
The man smiled, but it wasn’t as genuine as it should have been. “Of course, we thank you for your understanding.”  
Steve stood, feeling the ache of sleeplessness coarse through his leg muscles. He stepped forward as Bradshaw rose too. “Are you the agent in command of this hangar?”  
The man extended a hand. “Yes, Sir. Agent Amante. How can I help you?”  
Steve hesitated before taking the man’s hand, only for the sake of civility. “Rogers,” he said briskly. “Your hangar was used as a refueling point for SHIELD STRIKE team Delta’s quinjet earlier, was it not?”  
Amante clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head a little to the side. “Do you have SHIELD identification?”  
Bradshaw groaned. “He’s Captain fucking America.”  
The smile that met the comment was more like a grimace. “It’s standard procedure, Ma’am.”  
“Yes,” said Steve, pulling out his SHIELD ID badge.  
Amante took the badge and inspected it. “Yes,” he said finally. “Delta was here.”   
“We need to check your hangar to see if there was something they left behind,” said Bradshaw.   
“Anything in particular?”  
“That’s classified. Just let us go in there and look.”  
Amante slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling it back out momentarily with a tiny metal disc pinched between his fingers. “Was it a tracker, maybe?”  
Steve tried not to let his surprise show. He could sense Bradshaw tense beside him.   
“It’s strictly prohibited to attach devices to SHIELD quinjets. In fact, the offense is punishable by law.”  
“We ARE SHIELD,” said Bradshaw. “That’s our quinjet.”  
Amante raised an eyebrow dismissively. “Well it seems to have left without you. Allow me to do you the favor of calling you an escort back to the closest base. They may have questions…”  
Bradshaw stared at him. “Are you kidding me??”  
Steve was just as annoyed, but he couldn’t allow that to get them into deeper shit than they already were. They needed to find some way to get the upper hand, regardless as to whether they actually had it or not. Otherwise, who knew how many hoops they guy was going to make them jump through just to keep them occupied.   
“This is an operation that I feel might be above your pay grade, Amante,” Steve said slowly. “If you need the assurance from our supervisor, then I would be happy to provide that for you…”  
“Oh,” said Amante. “Is your supervisor here?”  
“I can contact—“  
“But that isn’t the same, is it?”  
Steve shook his head in disbelief. They were losing even more time. “You’re making a mistake.”  
“Perhaps you should’ve thought of that when you attached a tracking device to a SHIELD quinjet.”  
Bradshaw was already trying to take control of the situation. She had stepped away from the conversation with her phone to her ear, waiting for a pick-up in the other end.   
Steve knew that even by the time that all of this would get sorted out, whatever STRIKE was doing—wherever they were—it would all be dust in the wind by the time they got there.


	41. Hellbender Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brock and Vi struggle to figure out how the hell to get out of occupied Mogocha. Bradshaw and Roger back off---or do they? Rollins, Crue, The Asset, Cooper, and Delilah take a hike.

Vivienne awoke to a hand patting her thigh.   
“Hey—Hey, wake up, Vi.”  
She rolled over from where she had turned toward the inside of the belly of the SUV and saw Brock leaning into the trunk space toward her.   
“It’s time to go.”  
It would have been pitch black in the barn had the roof not collapsed on that one side. Moonlight spilled through the open office door and through the cracks in the wood paneling. It was really romantic, the way the light slipped around the space and crawled over the motionless heaps of hay and rusted out buckets and tack.  
Brock had encouraged her to get some sleep before they tried to venture out into Mogocha that night. The time difference was a doozy and though it didn’t seem to throw Rumlow off at all, Vivienne had felt the need for rest pull at her eyelids since early in the afternoon.   
Brock had been strict about the need for absolute success in this small mission of theirs and Vivienne had to admit that that was probably important since a failure would likely mean that they would both either be captured or dead. Him making her sleep was more of a disaster control thing than it was a compassion thing.  
Vivienne pushed herself up. Her muscles were sore for sleeping on the hard bed of the car.  
“Anything exciting happen?” she asked.  
“No,” said Brock. He had gotten out of the car now and he was doing a quick gear check. Vivienne wondered how many times he had done that while she was sleeping. “But that isn’t necessarily good. It just means that they’re probably still looking.”  
Vivienne pushed herself to her feet, too, and stretched. Brock handed her her utility belt and then her glock.   
“I reloaded it already.”   
Vivienne took the weapon after securing her belt and walked toward the barn doors. She could feel the summer night breeze coming through the spaces between the wood. It stirred the strands of hair that fell down across her cheeks.   
“Do we know where we’re going?”  
“For the most part. Our best bet for finding the wiring and tools that we need is going back to town. I know I saw an automotive repair shop on our way in, but I don’t entirely remember where it would be in relation to us.”  
“Hm,” said Vivienne. She pulled a little on the door and it slid open. The night was clear beyond the safety of their barn, which was unfortunate. Usually a little cloud cover was preferable since the moonlight bouncing off their moving forms would definitely be visible. She tilted her neck to pull those muscles and turned back to where Brock was getting everything together.   
“Well the visibility is going to be a challenge.”  
“It is what it is,” said Brock. “I didn’t we were gonna get dealt a good hand tonight anyways.”  
“Awesome.”

 

They set off into the field a few minutes later.  
It wasn’t too hard to cover themselves since the field was quite overgrown with neglect, providing the perfect tangled cover. They walked all the way to the edge of the property until they came to the dirt road that they had charged down earlier. Brock held up a fist and Vivienne stopped. He scanned the area—there was no cover, save the occasional hedge and the skinny twisty trees that formed a cocooned canopy above the road. There was also no other building or landmark until the end of the road. Vivienne could tell that Brock was trying to make the best decision about how to proceed. There really wasn’t a good one to make.   
He stepped out into the road and motioned for her to follow. The moonlight bounced off of the gravel underfoot, giving away the blackest black of their clothing. They walked to the other side of the road and toward the tree trunks. Though they provided little cover, it was as good as it was going to get. Following the line of trees, they started toward the town.   
Vivienne scanned the area while they walked. If they weren’t presently being hunted down, she would have relished the openness and fresh air that just couldn’t be matched back in DC. The temperature was just right and it just seemed like a sin for them to have to be on the run while all of this great atmosphere was going on around them.   
They came closer to a thicker line of trees and the first few houses of the residential community on their right. Brock slowed a little and tried to crouch into the thin shadows. Vivienne tried to do the same. Her heart started to beat a little faster with the anticipation of some sort of action. She hoped that she wouldn’t need the adrenaline, but she doubted they would be that lucky.   
As if on cue, a shot rang out across the stillness of the night and Brock immediately shoved her against the closest tree, pressing as close as he could to her and the tree trunk. Vivienne listened breathlessly, waiting. She could just make out the very distant sound of laughter. She looked up at Brock. He was looking out toward where the shot had come from.   
“It’s nothing.” He whispered.  
Vivienne reached up and tugged on his earlobe. “If we weren’t about to die…”  
Brock pushed himself off of her with a snort. “Let’s go.”  
When they moved on, Vivienne looked out toward where the sounds had come from. A glowing orange beast of a bonfire was curling up into the night sky and she could barely make out the dark figures that mingled around it. Another few shots rand out, followed by distant cheering. It looked like fun.  
They finally reached the denser treeline and the first scattering of houses that led into the town. Vivienne tried to conjure up an image of what it had all looked like when they had come through this way earlier for navigational purposes, but it wasn’t easy. They had been going pretty fast, so it was hard to remember the details.  
She figured that she would just allow Brock to take the lead, since he was already doing just that.   
They wove in and out of the shadows, crouching behind alley walls and dodging the occasional pair of headlights from a passing car. They were good at this. This is what they always trained for—not prisoner transport.   
They eventually emerged from the development of houses and into the openness of the small town. As soon as they reached the first building, a closed down gas station, Brock signaled for Vivienne to stop and they pressed themselves to the back wall of the building.   
He looked over at her. In the dark, Vivienne could see only the deepest shadows of his face in black.   
“If we make a mistake here,” he said. “We will die.”  
“Nice.”  
“Are you ready?”  
Vivienne touched the grip of her glock. “Yeah. Do we know what we’re doing?”  
“There’s an automotive shop just around the corner. The goal is to make it in and out without being seen.”  
“Got it.”  
“Ready?”  
“Let’s go.”  
They slipped out of the shadow and out across the pavement of the parking lot. Vivienne looked around for anything else that might pose a threat while Brock led the way.   
They made it to the next parking lot over—the one that belonged to the automotive shop. The space was jam-packed with rusted out car bodies and a few works in progress. Brock wove through the mess and toward the building itself. Vivienne followed him up to where there was a door on one side.   
Brock tried the handle. It was locked. He looked around while Vivienne stepped up to the door, pulling her utility tool from her belt. She slid one of the slender metal pieces into the lock and then wiggled the other one into place until she heard a click. She slowly pushed open the door into the darkness of the shop and entered into the space. Brock followed her, closing the door behind her and clicking on a small penlight.   
“What am I looking for?” he asked Vivienne lowly.   
“It might be easier if I look for it…” said Vivienne. “but you—“ she pulled his crushed sat phone out of her pocket and held it out to him. “—can get the blocker chip out of that. You just have to open up the back.”  
Brock took the phone. Vivienne could tell by his silence that he wasn’t entirely pleased with being told what needed to be done.   
While he tinkered with the phone, Vivienne went toward the tool chest and tangle of used wires in the corner of the space. She circled around the car that sat in the middle of the room and rummaged around in her own pocket for her flashlight. Just as she passed the front of the car, her boot knocked over a metal bowl of parts that was sitting on the floor and the bowl hit a downed fender with a clang, sending the tiny metal pieces it contained across the space in all sorts of directions. Vivienne froze. She waited until everything was silent again before she dared look back at Brock. He had frozen, too, and was looking hard at her over the beam of his flashlight.   
They waited for a minute in the silence like that until they were sure that all of the noises had ceased.   
Vivienne had just turned around and started toward the tool chest again when suddenly, a light came on from outside the shop. She looked back at Brock in panic. He reacted quickly and smoothly, stepping backward to press himself into the shadows behind the door. He held a finger up to his lips. Vivienne looked around for a place to find cover, but there wasn’t anything besides the car. She crouched down where she was and listened, her heard pounding, as she heard a screen door from the house next to the shop open and close and then footsteps crunch across the gravel toward where they hid in the garage.   
A hand tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. There was a hesitant pause before the door opened cautiously.   
“Hallo?” Came a Russian voice, male. He stood in the doorway and reached for the light.   
Brock was faster, though, and he pulled the man back into the darkness, covering his mouth and kicking the door shut. The man struggled, knocking over a few metal pipes and a box of bolts.   
“MMMph! Mphh-mm!” The man protested, grabbing Brock’s arm.   
Brock tightened his grip and pressed the muzzle of his gun into the man’s back. “Shut up.” He snarled in Russian. “Make another sound and I will shoot you.”  
Vivienne found her flashlight and switched it on, shining it over the two struggling men. The Russian squeezed his eyes shut with a wordless plea.   
Brock breathed out when the man finally calmed down. “Can I trust you not to make a sound?”  
The man wholeheartedly agreed.   
Brock slowly took away his hand, but not the gun.   
“Please,” pleaded the man in Russian. “Please don’t hurt me. It’s just me and my boy. Take what you need and leave us. Please.”  
“Agent,” said Brock, looking up at Vivienne. “Tell him what you need.”  
Vivienne pulled the pack that she carried from her back and took out the phone box. She stepped closer toward the man to show him the stub of wiring that hung out the side of it. “I need…” She forgot the word for wire, so she pulled at what was left of it.   
“Provod?”  
“Da,” said Vivienne. She backed up while Brock slowly let the man go, allowing him to find what they had come for.   
Brock still kept his gun trained on the man and he wasn’t shy about making that known. “Don’t do anything stupid. There are two of us and only one of you.”  
The man held up his hands to show that he wasn’t a threat. He made his way through the car parts toward a rack of looped wires and the tool chest. Vivienne lit the area with her flashlight beam while Brock quietly slipped his gun back into his holster in order to pull the blocker chip from the remains of his phone.   
Vivienne followed the man closely while he opened his drawer of tools, his nervously abrupt actions causing more of a clatter than it would have been if he had been calm. He reached around for a screwdriver with uncontrollably shaking hands. They needed quiet for this.   
“You have a son?” Asked Vivienne in Russian, trying to take the guy’s mind off of the possibility of being murdered.  
“Yes. He is eleven.” The man’s voice broke a little.   
Vivienne silently willed him not to cry, hurrying into her next question to try to soothe him faster. “What’s his name?”  
“Agent—“ warned Brock. They weren’t supposed to chit-chat like this.   
“He’s freaking out,” said Vivienne in English. “You know how shitty that would be if he blew our cover because he was crying??”  
Brock clenched his jaw and looked away. He had nothing to say.  
“That’s what I thought.” She looked back over at the Russian again. “So what’s his name?”  
“Andrei.” The man said. He breathed out and steadied his hand a little, grabbing the screwdriver they needed and then heading over toward where the loops of wire hung. He started to reach up and then hesitated, turning around to look at Brock and Vivienne. “Are you...Are you Leviathan?”  
Vivienne watched his expectant face—there was fear there while he awaited the response. She looked back around at Brock. “What did he ask?”  
“Net,” Brock responded to the man, shaking his head. He looked at Vivienne. “It’s nothing.”  
The man seemed relieved. Vivienne wondered what the hell it was that he thought they were.  
He grabbed the wire and handed the length of it and the tool to Vivienne. Vivienne held up her hand and Brock tossed her the blocker from the other end of the room. Vivienne knew he wasn’t going to leave the door.   
She pulled the phone box across the table toward her and handed the flashlight she held to the Russian. “Hold this.”  
He shined a light over the work space while Vivienne unscrewed the back of the box.   
“Andrei’s mother was killed in a bombing. The Leviathans were expanding their territory,” said the Russian.   
“I’m sorry,” said Vivienne. She looked over her equipment at Brock, who seemed uncomfortable with the use of that same word again. Vivienne put it together. “Leviafan,” she said slowly… “In English that’s maybe Leviathan? Are they the people who ambushed us? The men who Albrecht double crossed us for?”  
Brock’s lip twitched and he looked at her hard. “It doesn’t matter who they are, Vivienne.”  
“That’s not the impression I’m getting.”  
“Don’t repeat that name to anyone,” said Brock. “Not Barton, not Rogers, not anyone. Is that understood?”  
“Yeah,” said Vivienne. She couldn’t help allowing a bitterness to enter her tone. She had never had the intention of sharing classified intel anyways and here was Brock treating her like a gossiping highschooler. She knew better. “I know that already.”  
“Good.”  
Vivienne inserted the new wire and searched the chip for a port . She was focused, but she could still feel Brock’s hard stare burning onto her. She had beef with the Leviathans, too—they shot her and tortured the team for gods’ sake. She didn’t know why Brock was being so fucking sensitive about it.   
“Papa?”  
Brock immediately drew his gun again and whirled around to the door that he had unintentionally neglected to watch for those few seconds.   
A small boy was standing in the door. He looked at his father and then up at Brock, horror contorting his soft little face into a mask.   
The man erupted into a loud plea when he saw Brock pointing a gun at his son. “PLEASE DON’T SHOOT MY BOY—PLEASE!!”  
“BROCK!” shouted Vivienne. “That’s a fucking kid! You’re scaring the shit outta him!”  
Brock lowered his gun and grabbed the kid by the arm, pulling him unwillingly inside the garage. He closed the door again and the kid ran across the workshop to wrap his arms around his father. “PAPA?”  
Brock looked back over at Vivienne. “This is getting too fucking complicated,” he snarled.  
“I know,” said Vivienne. “But what the hell else are we going to do?”  
Brock cast a quick glance over at the door again before he grabbed a handheld saw from the wall and made a purposeful beeline across the shop toward the man.   
“Listen to me,” he barked in Russian, grabbing the man by the collar of his shirt. “We are here to fix this piece of shit phone and get the fuck out of here! If you raise your voice again I will fucking shoot you. Keep your boy quiet or you’re losing a finger for every goddamn whimper—!”  
“I’m sorry—my son—“  
“Shut the fuck up!”  
Vivienne watched Brock in awe as he walked back over to the door. She couldn’t believe his insensitivity.   
She wanted to apologize for his behavior, but he was right. They would be killed on the spot if they were caught.   
Vivienne slipped the chip into a hollow in the bottom part of the box and twisted the wiring into place. She opened up the back of the phone and started to teach herself how this older tech could be repurposed, glancing up occasionally to watch Brock glaring out the garage window into the night.

 

“So.” It was the first informal word spoken in the last eight hours. Cooper had been itching to break the silence. They had just pulled back onto the road again after trying to figure out where the hell they were. The navigational system in the car was fucking up—probably because they were in the middle of fucking nowhere—and so they had to rely on their training. Latitude, longitude. The map had come out of the glove compartment and they had tired out the shoddy navigational system in Rollins’ watch. It would help if they could send out a distress call, but as soon as Albrecht turned out to be a double, who even knew which HYDRA frequencies were compromised. If HYDRA didn’t know where they were, they were fucked. Anything could be implied from the loss of the asset.  
Rollins looked over at Cooper.  
“So,” started Cooper again. “Where are we going?”  
“We need to get back to Firethorn.”  
“This isn’t the way we came.”  
Jack gritted his teeth. “You think I don’t know that??”  
“Hey,” said Cooper. “Easy.”  
He looked back over his shoulder to where the Asset sat in the back with Crue. The guy was slumped a little in his seat. Cooper wondered if he was even awake or not.  
“Isn’t Firethorn in danger of being taken?”  
Jack was silent.  
“I’m not trying to piss you off, here, Jack,” said Cooper. “I’m just asking so I can better help you think through this.”  
Jack held his breath a little longer. When he couldn’t hold it anymore, he released it in a sigh and risked a glance over at Cooper. “I know.”  
“You think Rumlow and Donahue are still alive?”  
“I haven’t heard anything from Rumlow.”  
“Me neither. Have you tried calling?”  
“Twice. It went to voicemail.”  
They were quiet for a minute.   
“He’s resourceful,” offered Cooper. He knew that Jack and Rumlow had a friendship that went back before all of their SHIELD years. Jack was probably worried, but not a worried mark showed on his stony face. It was just how he was. All of that emotion he held back must have had to eat him all up inside like acid.  
Rollins nodded.   
“When we get to Firethorn, we can make contact again. It would take the Leviathans long enough to break into that defense system that we could figure out how to get away…” Cooper nodded over his shoulder. “An’ we got him.”  
“He’s no one-punch wonder, Tex. He’s just one person.”  
“We’ve got us, too, Jack.”  
“Four people against an army. Nice odds.”  
“We just have to hold Firethorn, right?” Cooper was getting a little annoyed at their situation and Jack’s negativity and he was trying but not succeeding too well to keep that out of his tone. “And how far away was the Leviathan line really from Firethorn when we left? We took the asset as a precaution.”  
“Because all of HYDRA’s strength is in the West right now,” said Jack. “We’ve got no manpower back there waiting to help us.”  
Cooper shook his head to himself. “Jesus.”  
Suddenly, a bloodcurdling cry erupted from the back seat and the asset jerked upright, struggling with his double wrist restraints.   
“Dear fucking GOD!” blurted Cooper, trying to reach back over his seat to help Crue hold the guy back. The asset’s body was jerking like he was having a seizure, but Cooper knew better. It wasn’t the first time that he had seen this.   
All of that brainwashing and physical pain and the cryonics… Something had to give and the guy was a wreck of a human being.  
Crue held a thick arm across the asset’s chest and the black cloth over the guy’s head expanded and folded as he took deep breaths, coming back down from his hysterics as he re-entered reality.   
“Fuck me sideways,” said Cooper. “That’s some freaky shit.”

 

Bradshaw had managed to get in contact with Fury, but they were still waiting at the SHIELD airstrip. Fury had managed to convince Amante that Cap and Bradshaw didn’t need clearance to be able to carry out their operation. He had said it in so few words, and yet Amante had crumpled like a soda can under the threat of the Director’s boot. Amante wasn’t going to admit he was wrong, even though he was supposed to be having a quinjet ready for the duo to set off to Russia in.   
Now that he was off the phone, however, Amante was trying to regain the small amount of control he had. He had disappeared to “inform the pilot” of the departure an hour go. Cap and Bradshaw could clearly see the quinjet through the glass of the room sitting in the hangar next door, but it hadn’t budged and nobody was running the routine maintenance that was required before flight.   
Cap was irritated, but he had been that way for however many hours now that they had been standing in the same office.   
“Cap.”  
Steve looked at Bradshaw, who had resigned herself to sit again in one of the green pleather armchairs.  
“Hm,” he acknowledged.  
“What are we really going to do?”  
Steve turned around to give her his full attention. “What do you mean?”  
Bradshaw shook her head. “I mean… We lost the tracker, which means that we don’t even know where they went after they left here. We would be trying to find them in completely in the dark. Not only that, but even if we got there, even if by some chance we happened to find their quinjet, we still don’t know if they even stuck around.”  
Steve’s brow marred with the annoyance of everything. He knew she was right, even if he didn’t want to believe that they had lost STRIKE.   
“I don’t know what else we can do.”  
“I don’t want them to win this one either, Steve, but maybe there’s nothing else to do.”  
“So we give up.”  
Bradshaw shrugged. “We get better. We need to be faster. We get any sort of feeling, we pin them to the wall. They’ve been one step ahead of us this whole time.”  
Steve was silent. He hated backing off like this, but he understood where Bradshaw was coming from.   
“Rumlow is a smart fucker, I’ll give him that,” said Bradshaw. “We just need to learn how he operates. This isn’t about catching STRIKE. It’s about learning how to catch him.”  
Steve rubbed a hand over his chin. He looked across the room to the window into the hangar again. Amante was still missing.   
“Alright,” he said. “Then let’s get back to DC before they do. I’m sure Amante would gladly give us a push to go back if he knows we aren’t headed toward STRIKE.”  
Bradshaw stood as Steve walked toward the door into the hangar that Amante had disappeared behind forever ago.   
“The faster we get there, the more time we have,” said Steve, holding the door upon for Bradshaw. “How much time again did you need to bypass the security systems in Rumlow’s office computer?”  
Bradhsaw smiled. “Oh, there’ll be more than enough time for that.”

 

Brock looked at his watch. He was getting impatient.   
The boy and his father had finally calmed down and both were sitting on the other end of the workshop bench where Vivienne was hunched over the phone box.   
He hoped that this would work like Vivienne had said it would—He needed to contact Precipice as soon as he could—they had been expecting the arrival of the team and their charge and he assumed that since they hadn’t arrived all of those hours ago, they had come to the conclusion that something had gone wrong as it had. No doubt, they had people on it, searching satellite feeds, looking for them. Maybe they sent out another team. It was a lot to hope for, but Brock knew how much the Asset meant to HYDRA.   
He needed to at least get in contact with Rollins. He knew the HYDRA frequencies were likely compromised at this point, but if he could at least figure out where they stood on the entire situation, then he could get a decent footing to figure out how to proceed next.   
He pried his gaze away from the quiet street beyond the window pane and took a step toward where Vivienne was working. “How much longer?”  
“I’m almost done,” said Vivienne. She was twisting the other end of the length of wire that snaked from the box into the exposed workings of the back of the phone.   
He had to admit that without her help, he may not have gotten to where he was right now. He didn’t like recognizing that he needed her like this, but she was smart and he was glad that she was here with him. It wasn’t something that he often felt—the need to share a struggle with another human being.   
Vivienne snapped on the back of the phone again and set it in its place in the box, looking back around at him. “Piece of cake.”  
“You did it?”  
Vivienne stood up from the work bench and smiled at the Russian father and son. “I’m sorry for all of this,” she said in their language. “Thank you for helping us.”  
Brock moved across the room toward her and the phone. She offered him the box with a raised eyebrow. “What do you say…?”  
Brock took the phone from her, a smile curling the corner of his mouth. Mostly, it was relief. “Yeah, yeah. You know I appreciate this.”  
He set the phone on top of the hood of the car and picked up the receiver. He dialed. 

Rollins picked up on the second ring. “Rumlow?”  
“Jack—Jesus! It’s good to hear your voice. Do you still have the Asset?? Where are you?”  
“Heading back to Firethorn.”  
“Wait. STOP. Stop driving.” Brock’s heart rate quickened. Why would Jack have thought that was ok? “Firethorn is too dangerous. For all we know, it could be taken by now.”  
There was a silence on the other end.   
“Jack?”  
“Well what the fuck are we supposed to do? We’ve been driving around with the Asset for hours. I don’t even know how to contact Precipice.”  
Brock sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked over at Vivienne, who was watching him intently.   
“How close are you to Firethorn?”  
“Less than an hour out.”  
Brock swallowed, weighing his really shitty options. “Park and go the rest of the way on foot.”  
There was a pause, then “Yes, sir.”  
“How is the Asset?”  
“He stopped bleeding, but Sir…His brain is a bowl of pudding. Without the book, we have no idea—“  
“It’s fine,” interrupted Brock. “We shouldn’t be using him anyways.”  
He caught a look from Vivienne, who was understandably confused. He would be, too, if he didn’t know anything.   
“Call me if you run into trouble,” said Brock finally. “Most likely, as soon as you try to make contact, you’re going to have company. That’ll take the heat off of us so that we can start making our way back to you, but that’s going to be one helluva welcome home party.”  
“I know, Sir.”  
“I’ll try to do what I can on my end to hold these people back as long as possible, but listen Rollins, we need to fulfill this mission at all costs, is that understood?”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
“First thing you do when you get to Firethorn is call them. Call them and let them know the situation. Keep it short and sweet, Rollins. Minutes count.”  
“Understood.”  
Rumlow could hear the roar of the tires coming through Rollins’ side of the line as the car crunched over the gravel road that led up to Firethorn.  
“When we get back, I owe you a beer, jack.”  
“You bet your ass.”  
Rumlow hesitated before ending the call, but he didn’t want to draw out the conversation any longer than it already was. Rollins knew what to do. He hung up the line and looked back over at his waiting audience.   
“You,” he said to the father. “I have a last favor to ask.”

 

Jack ended the call and looked at the road ahead for a good place to pull off to the side. It was hard to see in the darkness of the early morning, but there was a flatter area just ahead and he eased off the accelerator as they climbed the side of the mountain to it.  
He pulled the car slowly in to a stop just below the cliff face that hung above them.  
“What’s the verdict?” asked Cooper. “What are we doing?”  
“Walking,” said Rollins, looking up out of the driver’s side window at the looming mountainside. “Hiking.”  
“Serious?”  
Instead of answering, Rollins got out of the car and pulled the tension and soreness out of his muscles from all of the driving. The mountain was daunting, but looking around, Rollins decided that it was doable. He had gone further and in much less appealing conditions than this during his HYDRA training. They could follow the road—if anything came up in their path, they could use the woods to their advantage. He was good at this.   
Cooper came around the side of the car and opened the door for the Asset. He patted the guy on the chest and then grabbed his arm, guiding him out of the car. Crue slid out behind him.   
Rollins went around to the back of the car to get their gear. They couldn’t bring all of it, but they didn’t need much. If they made it to Firethorn, they had enough at the base to sufficiently aid them. If they didn’t make it to Firethorn, well, all of the ammunition and fancy guns wouldn’t protect them against an army while they were trekking up a mountain.   
Jack handed Cooper his rifle and loaded his sig sauer before he slid it into his holster. He exchanged a look with the Texan and then nodded at the snipers rifle. “At least if we die, you’ll die with Delilah in your arms.”   
Cooper snorted. “Since when have you ever respected her name?”  
Jack shrugged. “Seems like a better time to mention it than most. People fantasize the need to die happy. Thought it would help.”  
“No-one’s dyin’ today,” said Cooper. “That date’s somewhere far off. We’ll be back in the states and you’ll be old and grey and delusional. An’ I’ll croak long before. ‘Think we both know that.”  
Rollins smiled at him. It seemed delusional even to think, but maybe the idea of making it that long was what would keep them alive.  
He nodded at the Asset. “Take his hood off.”


	42. Hellbender Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA's not playin'. Pierce submits a "transfer" order, the Asset goes ape-shit when brought back to Firethorn, Rollins and Cooper seem like they're probably doin' it, and Vivienne doesn't know how to take a compliment.

Alexander Pierce ended the call and gazed out across the expanse of his office. The late afternoon sun cast funny shadows over the furniture within it and stretched things out of proportion.   
It had been Precipice on the other end of the line. They hadn’t received the Asset as they had been told that they would, and it seemed as though STRIKE had disappeared with the agent of the hour without a trace. Leviathan forces were running rampant all over Russia at the present, so Pierce assumed that the team had probably run into trouble. He assured Precipice that he would figure out where the hell Rumlow had taken the Asset and he would set things straight again. Precipice wasn’t entirely understanding, but he wouldn’t be either if he was put in their situation.   
He wished that he had as much confidence in his team as he had pretended that he had for the sake of Precipice, but in reality they hadn’t been performing up to his standards lately. Was it really that much for him to ask of the team to transport the Asset? It was a simple mission. Point A to Point B. Rumlow should have been able to handle it.   
Pierce slammed a closed fist down onto his desk. All of this work and he had to settle for this level of inadequacy. How the hell was he ever supposed to get anything done?  
He winced and cradled his hand.   
The computerized AI’s voice came over the speakers in his office. “Sir, you have a call coming in from SHIELD airstrip 113 in Cold Bay, Alaska.”  
Pierce sighed. What now? “Put it through to line one and seal the call, please.”  
“Sealed, Sir. Agent Amante is waiting on line one.”  
Pierce gave himself a minute to collect his composure and then pressed the blinking button that glowed translucently on his desktop.  
“This is Secretary Pierce.”  
“Sir. This is Agent Amante stationed at the Cold Bay airstrip in Alaska. Is the channel secure?”  
“It is, Agent.”  
“Sir, we just had a visit from Captain Rogers and the OBSIDIAN Agent. We pulled their tracker off of STRIKE team Delta’s quinjet earlier and they’ve just departed back to DC.”  
“They were in Alaska?? Did they say who authorized their little trip??”  
“Director Fury, Sir. But we managed to deter them from any further investigation and like I said, they’re headed back to DC.”  
Pierce squeezed his eyes shut. It just seemed like this whole day kept getting better and better. He might take a whole week’s worth of pills when he got home that evening. He grimaced. “When you say ‘deter’, what is it you mean, Agent?”  
There was a silence on the other end of the line before Amante answered. “”I mean we kept them from leaving to Russia, Sir,” he blurted. “I didn’t want to expose STRIKE team Delta.”  
“So let me get this straight,” said Pierce. “You’re telling me that you think that doing everything in your power to keep Captain America from going to Russia to investigate actually ‘deterred’ him from feeling the need to investigate further? You’re telling me that your actions didn’t just raise more questions for Stars and Stripes?”  
“I—My first instinct was to protect the STRIKE team, Sir.”  
“You should have called me earlier.”  
“Sir, please accept my deepest apologies—I didn’t—“  
“Yes, I know,” said Pierce. “But it’s done, isn’t it? Amante, is that right?”  
“Yes…Yes, Sir.”  
“Stay tuned. I’ll get your transfer to Russia in order.”  
“Sir—“  
Pierce ended the call. Some days were particularly challenging and this was just one.   
“Computer, get me in touch with Agent Larrison in security.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
A moment later, Agent Larrison was on the line.  
“Sir?”  
“I need you to go through all of the feed from yesterday and figure out which one of your mechanics stuck a tracker to Delta’s quinjet. I have reason to believe that Captain Rogers and Agent Bradshaw managed to convince him, so look for them in the frames, please, and when you find that section of tape, send it to my office.”  
“Yes, Sir.”  
Pierce sat back in his chair. The thought that kept him going was the idea of all of this being over. After Insight, he could finally put his feet up again and enjoy the freedom that came with having control over every aspect of his career.

 

Cooper stopped again and pulled his visor down, engaging the heat signature readings and the night vision capabilities in his helmet. He scanned the surroundings, looking for something, anything, that might indicate that they weren’t alone on this side of the mountain. They had decided to leave the road as they neared the fortress, taking to the trees to give them the cover they needed. Cooper scouted ahead, making sure the way was clear before they paraded the Asset through the forest. So far, everything was quiet. It was spooky, seeing Firethorn rise up out of the trees in the darkness ahead like a giant cement corpse. He had no doubt that the ground they were approaching was rigged. HYDRA played dirty in the defense game and they weren’t above installing wicked security measures.   
Once Rollins and the rest of the group caught up to him, Cooper made sure to alert them to that fact.   
“We don’t want to have come all this way just to get zapped by an invisible fence,” he added after explaining that the tight security could be a potential issue. “That would just be a shitty way to go.”   
“Well, think about it, Cooper,” said Rollins. “Albrecht was the last to leave this place and he was pretty chummy with the Leviathans. You really think he even bothered to lock the front door?”  
Cooper was still reluctant to move forward. It was just his suspicious instincts that kept him from walking on like nothing was waiting in the night to kill him.   
“Come on,” said Rollins, walking toward the dark structure. “The guy wanted the base to be seized. We’re not gonna get blown to kingdom come.”  
“I was tryina protect your ass.”  
“My ass doesn’t need protecting,” said Rollins. “But just in case, you take the Asset—“ he pushed the Asset toward Cooper, “—I’ll take the lead.”  
Although it was dark, it was the first time that Cooper really looked at the Asset’s face. He couldn’t make out the expression or the detailed feature of the man, but he saw the shine of the moonlight gleaming off of the guy’s eyes.   
He had heard stories. It was the third time he had been in the same space as the Asset. The other times the Asset was someone completely different. Silent, driven, focused. Now, the man standing before him was rather unimpressive. His shoulders were weighed down with some invisible burden and he seemed shorter and much less intimidating.   
Cooper tried not to hesitate. It felt somehow morally wrong treating this human with the kind of indecency that they were—like he was a weapon, not a person.   
Cooper pushed the guy’s shoulder a little so he would turn back around and start following Rollins. He couldn’t keep looking at him.  
The Asset fell into line and started walking. Cooper barely held out his hand as a gesture to guide their hostage, but his fingers, were they fully extended, still would have fallen short of touching the guy.   
As they kept walking, his mind slowly drowned in all of those thoughts that preyed on him when he was alone, or when he stared at the ceiling fan that went around and around in his room for hours while Jack had no trouble finding sleep beside him.  
The scales were always out of balance, now, and the memories that he had of when they had once been perfectly still were fading fast.

The fortress was dark and hollow. Every footstep they took deeper into the heart of it—down the long cement tunnel—reverberated around and down the breathing blackness of the passage. Rollins was in the lead still, wielding a flashlight against the harsh darkness of their windowless surroundings.   
They had entered the still and silent fortress without complications. It had seemed that maybe the Leviathan forces hadn’t been as impending as Albrecht had made it seem they were, but then again, it had been Albrecht’s intel and who the hell knew how much information they could actually trust from him.   
The building hadn’t been hard to get into. It was likely that Albrecht had neglected to lock it down, but that gave Cooper the feeling that he had been anticipating company, which made him uneasy since it seemed that everything had been left untouched. He wondered how soon they should expect the visit that hadn’t come yet.   
Rollins seemed just as much on edge as he was. As he approached the metal portal at the end of the hall, he cast a last beam of light back and past the group in the direction from which they had come. The small amount of light that bounced off of the walls gave away the anxiety that had set into the hard bones of his cheeks and kept his eyes wide and searching.  
Rollins turned back to the portal and held his flashlight over the handprint scanner that waited for him, setting his palm down on the sensor.   
“Agent Rollins, Jack B,” stated the computerized system. “Identity confirmed, access permitted.”  
There was a heavy metallic clank as the thick double bolt system was released and the metal door split in the middle, opening up like a mouth to consume them. The lights beyond the doors lit automatically, bringing into shape the following room. It was a long hall with doors on both sides and then a staircase at the end.   
When the Asset saw with his own eyes where they were, he froze.   
Cooper walked up behind him. “Hey—C’mon.” He pushed the Asset a little with the tips of his fingers.   
Instead of moving forward, though, the Asset bucked back against Cooper’s push and turned around, his wide eyes wildly searching Cooper’s face. He didn’t seem to recognize him at all.   
Cooper saw his knee bend and he instinctively ducked when the Asset leapt for him, trying to swing his restrained fists at him.  
“HEY!” Cooper recovered from his bend and pushed back up into the Asset’s chest, knocking him back into Rollins, who tried to make a grab for his arm. It was his metal prosthetic, though, and the Asset easily yanked his body away from his grip, coming back at Cooper with an unexpected strike that hit him squarely in the temple.   
Cooper smacked into the wall beside him and then there was nothing at all except for black.

 

“It seems like a lot of this plan is being left to chance.”   
They were on the road again—back the way they came, hopefully ahead of the Leviathan wave instead of behind it as then made their way to Firethorn. Leaving Mogocha hadn’t been hard. Before they had left the automotive shop, Brock had asked the Russian for a last favor: to drive to the other side of town and place a call from a gas station there that there had been a disturbance involving several Americans in the store the next parking lot over. The kid was kept at the house for leverage of course—Rumlow didn’t trust anybody and this prevented the guy from flaking out on them.  
He knew that the Leviathans were monitoring the local frequencies, so the reaction time would be quick and it would pull the roadblock from the exit they needed to take to get back to Firethorn. Just as they had planned, they saw three SUVs fly by on the main road just outside the automotive shop. As soon as that happened, they left the shop and hotwired a pickup truck that was sitting a little further down the road. Now, they were well on their way to Firethorn, but they were still far from completing their mission.   
Vivienne looked across the cab at Brock, who had either not heard her, or was choosing to ignore her. He was fixated on the road ahead and Vivienne knew that all of this uncertainty, seat-of-the-pants planning, and improvising was probably driving him mad. He was a man of precision, and the situation that he was thrown into was chaotic and completely out of his control.   
“Brock?”  
He looked over at her.  
“You good?”  
His face suggested that he couldn’t believe she was asking him that. “What do you want me to say, Vivienne?”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes and looked out her window and the first hint of dawn that was glowing just enough to see the horizon line and the towering majesty of the mountain range ahead.   
“…Don’t need a fuckin’ shrink right now,” she heard Brock mutter under his breath.  
“Don’t be so dramatic.”  
“Don’t pick a fight—“  
“Don’t make me!” Vivienne looked back around at him, a laugh lilting the end of her exclamation. It lacked humor. “No one else is in this car with us right now, Brock. You don’t have to act all tough. I know you’re pissed about the last twenty-four hours, but you don’t have to take it out on me. I was just trying to help.”  
Brock ground his molars together. “I’m not gonna conjure up some feelings to lay on the table for you like some pussy.”  
“Forget I asked.”  
There was a silence during which Vivienne listened to the road roar by underneath their speeding tires.  
Another few minutes passed before she spoke again.   
“Why did you try to keep me in the dark about the Leviathans?” she asked. “I’ve known about them since the last time we were in Russia. It’s just putting a name to them. Why didn’t you tell me about them before?”  
“It doesn’t matter, Vivienne.”  
Vivienne groaned. “Just stop saying that. I wanna know what I’m doing all of this for. Is that seriously too much to ask? We could die.”  
“You work for SHIELD.” He said it like that answered all of her questions. It didn’t. He cut her off before she could speak again, knowing that there would be more questions if he didn’t just give her a straight answer.   
“It’s called compartmentalizing, Kid. The guys on the top floor know everything, my boss knows slightly less, I know very little, and you know only what I tell you. It works better that way.”  
“How the actual fuck would somebody think that keeping people in the dark works better?”  
Brock rubbed his eyes. They had been up for over twenty-four hours at this point and they really hadn’t stopped moving since they started. Vivienne could tell that he was probably trying to be patient. “It just does. We’re pieces in all of this. STRIKE—we’re like the rooks. We aren’t the players—that’s just not us.”  
Vivienne narrowed her eyes at the road before them. “I hate that.”  
“It’s not great, but it needs to be that way.”  
“So who are the Leviathans?” asked Vivienne. She had managed to pull Brock just enough from his brooding detachment that she could get a better shot at a straight answer.   
Brock was quiet for a minute, thinking, calculating, deciding. “Soviet Guerillas.”  
Vivienne waited for him to go on. He seemed to be picking and choosing what to tell her from what he knew. He was compartmentalizing.  
“They’ve been a problem for SHIELD in Russia.”  
“Ok,” said Vivienne. “Why did they ambush us? That guy that we were transporting—is he Leviathan? Is they why they wanted him?”  
Brock drew in a long slow breath. “No. He’s not anything.”  
“Why is he so important?”  
“You don’t get to know everything, Vivienne,” said Brock. “I’ve told you enough.”  
Vivienne groaned and curled her knees to her chest, setting her boots on the dashboard with enough force to let it be known that she was giving up on the subject for now. “I hate this so much,” she said.  
“No you don’t.” Brock looked over at her. There was a knowing smirk on his mouth. “That look that I see you get—you don’t hate this. It’s a high for you.”  
“Tch.” Scoffed Vivienne. “This is my job.”  
“You wouldn’t be good at anything else.”  
“Wow. Ok.”  
“That’s a good thing.”  
Vivienne wanted to say something back, but she couldn’t think of anything. She wondered if that was actually true.   
When she had first started with STRIKE, she had remembered her perception of them—intimidating, focused, dangerous. They were weapons. That’s what they were trained to be and that’s the mindset that she had been trained to adopt, too. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions like she was doing right now—that wasn’t what they did. She wasn’t supposed to let things like this bother her because that wasn’t part of the job description.   
She wondered if Brock was right. Was it a good thing that she was “good” at this and what did that mean?   
Was it good that she was one of them? She hadn’t seen Brock hesitate to put that boy and his father in the sights of his gun.   
She remembered the woman in Austria—the adrenaline that had taken over, the chase, the drive. She remembered the look in her eyes and then the hot blood all over her face. Had she felt guilty?  
“You good over there?”  
Vivienne hadn’t realized that she had let his comment burrow so deeply into her thoughts. She was staring wide-eyed at the horizon, deep in thoughts that she had only realized, just now, that she had purposefully kept locked away somewhere deep in her head.  
“Hmm…?” she said, slowly pulling herself out of her thoughts. “Yeah”  
“Maybe I’m not the one who needs the shrink, space-cadet.”  
Vivienne sighed. “You may be right.”

 

Cooper opened his eyes. He was sprawled across a leather couch. A lamp cast a glowy orange light over the tall stone office that he lay in from where it sat atop a wooden desk.   
He started to push himself up, wondering how the hell he got to where he was, when a splitting pain shot through his temple. He tenderly reached up to touch the hot, swollen bump on his forehead.   
“Jesus, Many, and Josephhh,” he groaned, grimacing at the pain that clouded his vision darkly for a minute. “Fffffuck.”  
He heard a smattering of a conversation in the other room, but he couldn’t focus very well on what they were saying. He heard footsteps coming toward the door that was open on the other side of the office. Rollins appeared in the doorway.  
“You’re awake,” he said. There was some relief there.   
“The fuck happened?”  
Rollins looked back down the hall and then entered the room, coming slowly over to him. “The Asset knocked you out. Struck you upside the head with his restraints.”  
It was coming back to Cooper little by little. “Oh.”  
“Crue grabbed him. We have him in the chair downstairs.”  
“Mm,” grunted Cooper. He wished he hadn’t seen the guy’s face like that.  
Jack stood over him. “You good, Tex?”  
Cooper squinted up at him. Even tipping his head back like that hurt. He had for sure gotten a concussion. “Myeah.”  
Jack didn’t seem convinced. “Maybe we can find some ice for that.”  
“Did you get in contact with Precipice?”  
“Yeah,” said Jack. “They were able to retake the airbase, so they can finally send someone here without getting shout outta the sky. No need for driving anymore.”  
“That’s good. Maybe HYDRA’s winning this thing against the Leviathans.”  
Jack shrugged. “No-one really wins ever. It always just seems to be constant turmoil here.” He paused. “But they’ll be sending another team within the next two hours.”  
“And the catch is that the Leviathans probably heard that, too.”  
“Partly,” said Jack. “They know we’re here, but I told Precipice about Albrecht first thing. They unlocked a new frequency and called us back on it. Leviathans couldn’t have heard the rest of the convo. They don’t know we have the Asset and they don’t know that Precipice is sending a team out with them to reclaim the base and take the Asset back.”  
Cooper nodded. “Well hopefully they’ll think we’re just a bunch’a chumps and just send us a real light number that I can pick apart from the roof.”  
Jack grinned. “Hopefully, Coop. Keep your fingers crossed.”  
“I will if that’s what it takes. This had been a long wild ride,” said Cooper, lifting a hand for Rollins to help him up. “At this point I just wanna go home and break into that bottle of Tenessee I bought.”  
Rollins took his hand and pulled him off of the couch. “Boozy ol’ Cowboy.”  
Cooper stretched his back and turned back to Rollins, patting him on the side of the neck. “Your boozy ol’ cowboy.”  
Rollins stepped closer to him. He stood a good two inches taller than Cooper and Cooper had to close one eye to look up at him from the shooting pain above the other.   
“Let’s split that bottle of jack when we get back to the States. You can bring it over. I can cook—“  
“You can’t cook.”  
“You can come over…I can order Chinese takeout…”  
Cooper chuckled. “C’mere.”  
He pulled Jack into a smiling kiss. “You do the best job of ordering Chinese takeout than anyone I ever knew.”


	43. Hellbender Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking into computers and breaking fingers.

It was late when they finally landed in DC again. They were tired, but the new plan was worth all of the energy that they still had left.   
Steve could feel the tingling on the back of his neck and through his fingertips as they taxied into the hangar and tested their land-legs again with a brisk walk to their ride. He was ready to catch Rumlow and the rest of STRIKE and they could be so close to actually doing that. Everything was falling into place and the more he thought about it, the wiser the decision was to leave Alaska for DC instead of Russia. Even of they had caught up to STRIKE, whatever had been done and said would have been lost to time and they would have been back to square one. Now, back in DC and with enough time to potentially break into Rumlow’s files, they actually had a fighting chance to finish this thing and answer a lot of long awaited questions.  
The car ride there was silent—no one wanted to break the silence for fear of that somehow hindering them from accessing the STRIKE leader’s office any sooner. The drive to the Triskelion felt ridiculously long. They seemed to be catching all of the red lights and the traffic seemed unreasonable for this time of night.  
“This could be it, Cap,” said Bradshaw as their ID badges were returned to them. The car was pulling up to the entrance and they were ready to make a move.   
Steve risked a smile. “It could be, but I’m not banking on this one hundred percent until we’ve got them pinned.”  
“I hear that,” said Bradshaw.  
The car stopped and they got out of it, making a fast beeline for the doors to the Triskelion. They passed through security relatively quickly since the volume of workers had decreased drastically after eight and they made their way across the lobby toward the other end of the building. The automatic lights turned on as they walked down the long hall. No-one else had been down there recently—that was good.   
Bradshaw swiped her ID badge across the access terminal and waited for the last gate to open.   
“Bradshaw, Cassidy L. Access granted.”  
Steve looked at her in alarm. “Wait—they’ll know that we were back here—all of this gets logged into SHIELD files.”  
“Yeah, but that’s not a problem right now.”  
“Cassidy. Don’t think they won’t check the log—it’s likely that’s what he’s been doing this whole time to keep us in the dark. If he finds out—“  
“He won’t,” said Bradshaw, walking through the gate. “I can hack into the log and change it, too.”  
“That’s not STRIKE you’d be hacking—that’s SHIELD.”  
Bradshaw snorted, placing a hand on her hip that she had slung to the side. “Not my agency.”  
Steve gritted his teeth, but there wasn’t really anything he could say. He swiped his access card, taking one last look around.   
“Rogers, Steven G. Access granted.”

Bradshaw passed Steve her multipurpose tool and Steve slid the long metal pick into the lock. The gym outside of the office was dark and quiet. Only the reserve lights were on and they cast a funny dim greenish glow over the polished floors.   
Bradshaw looked around as the click of the lock opening resounded across the space.   
They entered the office slowly, creeping into the room as if it was booby-trapped. The black leather chair was turned outward where Rumlow had left it and the desktop was neat and organized: two pens on the right side of the computer setup and a log book set parallel to the keypad on the left. Bradshaw sat down in the chair and swiveled around to focus on the desktop monitor. She pressed the power button and then handed Steve the leather-bound log book.   
“Check that while I set this up,” she said. “See what he’s been keeping note of.”  
Steve took the book, looking out the window of the office and into the gym again before he opened the cover.   
The computer warmed up and Bradshaw rolled her shoulders back as a password blocker popped up on the screen.   
“Password?” she said, reaching into her bag that she brought. She pulled out a tiny tool with a light attached to the end. She clicked it on and a blue light swam over the keyboard, lighting up fragments of fingerprints. “Oh, he’s good.”  
“What..?”  
“He wiped the keyboard before he left,” said Bradshaw. “He knows how to watch his back.” She clicked the password prompt. “Also we have three tries on the password before the camera on this thing wakes up and starts recording.”  
“Are you kidding? Can we not just hack into it without a password?”  
“Nope,” said Bradshaw. “The guy’s super paranoid. Tamper-free safety backup. Makes you wonder. Is there anything in that book that might help us here?”  
“It’s a bunch of dates,” said Steve. He had pulled out his phone and was busy taking pictures of the pages. “There are a few places, too, but the significance isn’t really apparent.”  
“Hm,” said Bradshaw. She grinned. “We could try something about Agent Donahue.”  
Steve shook his head in disapproval when Cassidy mentioned Rumlow’s conduct. He didn’t offer anything up to the password manager—honestly, he didn’t want to think about it.   
Bradshaw was lost in thought for a minute before she grimaced to herself and typed in her first attempt at the password. She hit enter and a red bar popped up below the prompt.   
“Strike one,” she said. “We need some sort of educated guess. We can’t just wing it on this one.”  
Steve turned the next page to the log book and a piece of paper fell out and dropped to the floor. He bent to pick it up.  
Bradshaw watched him. “What’s that?”  
“Try ‘Irene Rumlow’.”  
Cassidy typed it in. The Red bar filled two thirds of the way. “Shit.”  
“Try adding a ‘1991’.”  
“Steve,” said Bradshaw. “Are you sure? This is our last try. There are like a million possibilities.”  
“Try it.”  
Cassidy typed it in and hit enter. The bar turned green and then the screen switched to a desktop background. Cassidy looked up at Steve in surprise. “Who the hell is Irene?”  
Steve showed Cassidy what had fallen out of the book. It was a grainy picture of a shyly smiling woman with long dark hair. She had her arms wrapped around a young boy—dark hair, familiar eyes.   
“Shit is that Rumlow?”  
The picture had a caption at the bottom. “Irene and Brock, birthday 1991”.  
“Good guess,” said Bradshaw. “I honestly would have never thought of his mother…”  
Steve bent over the desk toward the computer. “Can we copy some of these documents to a jump drive?”  
“Tamper-free,” said Bradshaw. “Unfortunately, that means that nothing is coming off this sucker without some heavy-duty hardware that I don’t have. However, we have eyes and phones.”  
“True,” said Steve. He pointed at the screen. “Start with that one.”  
The file was labeled “Cambodia” with a date marked from the past year.  
Bradshaw clicked on it. The file opened, but where there was supposed to be print, there were only black bars. There were twenty pages worth of it, too.   
“It’s encrypted,” said Bradshaw. “Which I could have told you, I suppose. I tested the computer for an encryption lock last time, remember? We pick a file and then we wait 24 hours.”  
“A lot can happen in 24 hours.”  
“Well,” said Bradshaw. “I can piggyback this bug on the software and get it started. It can decrypt it without triggering the encryption lock or the tamper-free. It’s just that we would have to be here and log back on to actually read the thing. And then, even so, it’s only one document at a time.”  
“Can you start it now?”  
Bradshaw found the port she was looking for in the back of the computer and plugged in her bug. A notification popped up on the desktop and she entered a few numbers and two passcodes. The notification disappeared and the desktop went back to normal. She rolled the chair back from the desk.  
“It’s started.” She turned off the monitor. “Now we wait.”

 

The SUV had turned onto the unassuming gravel road that led up to Firethorn a little over an hour ago. Vivienne had fallen asleep for a decent portion of the trip, but as soon as the tires left the pavement and they started to charge up the eroded pat, she had startled awake. She hadn’t felt like talking, which was a new thing for her. She had drifted off thinking of everything that she had always disregarded according to how she had been trained. She hadn’t been given instruction on how to handle all of the death—all of the suffering and chaos that she had had a hand in causing, not to mention the people who had been felled by the bullets that left her gun.   
Now, upon review of all of that heavy thought, she still didn’t know how to feel. It was a job and she had been doing her job when she had been doing all of that, so she shouldn’t feel the need to let all of that weigh on her conscience…but honestly, and it surprised her when she realized it, honestly it didn’t. Maybe it was all of that brainwashing that had started right at the beginning. All of that “I am a weapon” crap. Maybe that’s all she really was. Maybe Brock was right.  
She felt hollow because who would want to only be able to see that cold and ruthless side of them as the only person they were capable of being. Lately, she hadn’t really had the opportunity to see if she could be anything more than that. STRIKE had consumed her.   
“We’re a little over two hours out,” said Brock.  
Vivienne startled when he broke the deafening silence, steadying her racing heart by closing her eyes a little and pressing her palm to her forehead.   
“Are you ok?”  
She shook her head ‘no’. “I’m fine.”  
“I need you here, Vi,” said Brock. “It’s only you and me until we get to Firethorn and we have no idea what’s on the road ahead.”  
Vivienne nodded. “I know. I’m here, I’m here.”  
“Ok.” he didn’t sound sure. “Call Rollins. See where they’re at.”  
Vivienne unbuckled and grabbed the phone from the seat behind them. She dialed Jack’s number according to Brock’s instruction and waited. Jack picked up on the second ring.  
“Hey, Rollins, it’s Donahue,” said Vivienne. “Agent Rumlow wants the deets on your status.”  
“It’s quiet,” said Rollins. “Give the phone to Rumlow.”  
Vivienne rolled her eyes. “Good to hear from you, too.” She held the phone out to Brock.  
He glanced at her and then took it, pressing the cumbersome plastic receiver to his cheek. “What.”  
Vivienne pretended not to eavesdrop, but she could hear snippets of conversation from Jack as he explained their situation. She figured that this was all part of that bullshit compartmentalizing thing. The first thing she heard was “Asset”, which was repeated several times and then “book”. She could sense Rumlow glance over at her out of her peripherals. She had learned a while ago how to feign disinterest.   
“Don’t worry about all that, Jack,” said Brock eventually. “They’ll get all that sorted out. That’s not on us. But listen—I wanna know the moment the Leviathans lay a foot on Firethorn soil—Did you activate the perimeter control—?” He paused, listening to Jack list all of the measures that he had already taken. “—good. Good. Ok. We’re probably two hours out, so do me a solid and call if you see anything.”  
Brock offered the phone back to her and Vivienne took it, ending the call. 

They drove up a little further before they saw a vehicle parked on the side of the road. Brock slowed the pickup down a little and they crept up to it. Vivienne saw the broken glass of the back window.  
“It’s their SUV,” she said lowly. “Do you think the Leviathans are even here…?”  
“Don’t fuckin’ jinx us.”  
They drove slowly by. Vivienne gazed at the SUV as they went; it was captivating like a corpse.   
They crept further along the road, climbing up the incline. Gravel popped beneath the tires and everything was quiet except for the gentle grumble of the engine as Brock barely tapped it to keep them moving forward.  
As they rounded the next bend, Vivienne leaned toward the dashboard, trying to get a better look out the windshield.   
“Is that a chain?”  
Her question was met with tensed silence. Brock immediately stepped in the brakes. A chain hung across the road, attached to two tree trunks on either side of their path. The chain swung a little. Vivienne didn’t think there was any wind.  
She looked across in alarm at Brock.  
He swallowed, his lips pressed together and his nostrils flared as he tried to think quickly.   
He suddenly reached for the gearshift and slapped the Pickup into reverse.   
As if on cue, a spray of bullets pelted into his side of the car as they swung around on the narrow path. The front tires shuddered against the rocks and then wedged into the ditch that kept the vehicle from careening down the side of the mountain. Vivienne fumbled for her seatbelt to unfasten it, but it was sticking and she couldn’t pull the buckle out. If they stayed inside the truck any longer, they would be reduced to shreds. She barely glanced at Brock, but he was thinking the same thing. He pulled the gun from the holster on her thigh and shoved it into her hands.   
“Cover us, goddamn it!”  
Vivienne grabbed the glock and fired a few shots back and over Brock’s seat where the gunfire was coming from. The bullets paused just long enough for the blade of Brock’s knife to pull through the seatbelt. As soon as she was free, Vivienne threw open the door on her side and tumbled out, recovering and pointing the glock wildly up toward the woods where their attack had come from. Brock pulled himself over the middle console and Vivienne grabbed his arm to help him out of the vehicle. A spray of bullets hammered into the gravel and then pelted in a stream up toward her feet. Vivienne quickly released a round and the bullets stopped just before they touched her toes. Brock got out of the car behind her and pushed her toward the embankment across the road, taking out his own gun and covering them with a defensive spread.   
Vivienne stumbled down the hill, trying to get her footing on the steep and loose rock that made up the side of the mountain. Where the shaggy earth couldn’t cling. She felt Brock’s hand pushing her again, pushing her toward the right, in the direction of Firethorn, which was where all of the bullets were coming from. Vivienne lost her footing a little, recovering with a racing heart. The woods had become deathly quiet again and so they had to be quiet, too, so that they didn’t give themselves away. Stealth was all they had to fight with at this point, and the Leviathans had definitely seen where they had been headed, so they didn’t even have surprise as an advantage.   
Vivienne wove in-between the skinny trunks of the trees, looking around sporadically, trying to spot the enemy before they saw her. Brock suddenly grabbed her arm hard and pulled her back, firing a round of shots just to their left. Vivienne looked back and saw two men backing off across the road. She pushed another round into her glock and cocked it, squeezing off two quick rounds, just like she had practiced on the range and in the sim countless times. The two men were pummeled back and fell across the gravel.   
“Nice,” said Brock.   
Vivienne tried to breathe a little—her tensed limbs needed it. “Thanks, I—“  
“SSHH!”  
Brock stopped and tensed. He was listening.   
Vivienne could hear it, too. Motors. They wounded like ATVs. “Oh, fucking shit.”   
There was movement in the woods below them and Vivienne could make out three ATVs climbing up through the trees. Bullets pelted into the bark of the trees around them and Vivienne whirled back around toward the road with Brock right beside her. A hot fast slug skimmed over her calf and then another one brushed her waist on the left. She sprinted across the road. Brock fired a round down at the wailing ATVs and then spun to follow her up into the trees. Vivienne almost fell over one of the bodies that lay sprawled in their path, but Brock caught her elbow with a steel grip and pulled her with him toward the poor cover the mountainside provided for them. They climbed up the incline as the ATVs flew over the road, spitting rocks back into the trees behind them. Shots split the air again and Vivienne ducked and covered the back of her head as they punched into the growth around them.   
She suddenly heard a loud voice ahead of them and then there was movement in the trees—more men. They whirled around at them, brandishing rifles. Vivienne didn’t even have time to think as she dove into the brush on the side of the mountain, followed hotly by another spread of bullets. She felt herself roll as soon as she sacrificed her footing and she slid down, down. She couldn’t stop herself as she neared the lip of the drop down onto the gravel road below. Vivienne grabbed for something to hold on to, but there was nothing there. She clawed her fingertips into the loose rocks and dirt, but it wasn’t enough. She fell back helplessly off of the lip of earth and onto the gravel road below.  
The fall was long enough to knock the wind out of her lungs when her back and hand met the road and she felt the awful snaps of her pinkie and ring fingers break as they were pushed back too far upon impact. She rolled over, trying to recover fast enough to escape. It was hard to get her palms under her shoulders without focusing on her crooked fingers. She heard the sound of the ATVs, but they were continuing on up the mountain further than she was. She could hear men shouting in the woods above the road, too, but she wasn’t in immediate danger.   
She gasped, finally able to draw enough air into her lungs to push herself to her feet. Vivienne looked wildly around, scanning the road and the trees for wherever the hell Brock was. They had gotten separated when she had fallen.   
She wanted to call out to him, but that was a stupid idea and she knew it. She couldn’t stay on the road, either. She moved over toward the downhill side of the gravel path and stepped down into the foliage. The cut from the bullet that had skimmed over her calf stung, but she couldn’t think about that. She moved forward in the direction of Firethorn. The faster she got to the rest of the team, the better.


End file.
